Missing AirAsia flight

[Staggerwing]

This does not look good:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30614627

An AirAsia Indonesia airliner flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has gone missing.

Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at around 06:20 local time (23:20 GMT) over the Java Sea.

The plane, an Airbus A320-200, disappeared midway into the flight of more than two hours from the city of Surabaya. No distress call was made.

Bad weather was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night

[Con]

This area is like the new Bermuda Triangle

Con

[steve58]

While this one does seem to be possibly weather-related, still its always bad news when a plane full of people goes missing.  :(

[Gusington]

Any updates on this? Saw it late last night on the news.

[Staggerwing]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30619085

The AirAsia Indonesia plane in question was delivered in 2008, has flown 13,600 times, covering 23,000 hours, and underwent its last maintenance on 16 November.

Correct me if i'm wrong but that's an average of 161 flights a month, or more than 5 a day every day. While not impossible, with cleaning, fueling, loading/unloading, and all the rest that goes into a single flight that seems a bit excessive for a plane the size of an A320.

Any feedback on this from Yskonyn or other commercial pilots?

[GDS_Starfury]

heavy puddle jumping all day between islands.  say each flight is under 500 miles but over lots of water.

consider how much use Smucks Vulva gets and it only recently broke down.

[Staggerwing]

heavy puddle jumping all day between islands.  say each flight is under 500 miles but over lots of water.

consider how much use Smucks Vulva gets and it only recently broke down.

Assuming that the flight it was on is it's regular route then it was spending at least 10-12 hours flying each day. Add an hour at each airport to unload, load, fuel, etc, and you would have to do that every day 7 days a week 365 days a year to make thoset 13,600 flights. And that's assuming that the plane started flying it's route on the first day of the year it was delivered. If the airline started flying it in December of 2008 then it really gets hairy. How many hours is it allowed to operate before undergoing an engine overhaul and how long is it out of service for that overhaul?

It hardly seems like there is any actual time for maintenance.

[endfire79]

This is not a lucky year for aviation.  I have a lot of colleagues passing through the area this month and the coming months. The guy next to me was supposed to fly a few days after Christmas to Jakarta via Toronto  & Hong Kong.  Not sure which carrier he chose for his connect flight to Jakarta.  Waiting to hear back that he's on a beach sipping beers hopefully soon.

[jomni]

Latest bit of news I heard: pilot asked to climb to 38,000 ft to avoid the thunderstorm.  ATC declined because the altitude was taken by another flight.

[mirth]

It's hard to accept that in this day we can still have airliners completely disappear without a trace or indication of a problem. It's time for airlines to be required to live-stream data from aircraft. It's long overdue actually.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/airasia-flight-qz8501-why-airlines-don-t-live-stream-black-box-data-1.2586966

http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/flight-mh370/57688/flight-370-its-time-airlines-live-streamed-their-flight-data

[DoctorQuest]

This is scary stuff. I had a biz trip from the US to India in October and don't think I was not just a little apprehensive. Plus I was flying Air France for a good chunk of the trip.

Then there were the domestic flights in India I had to take. I think they hire ex-naval aviators given the some of the landings we made. I should move to India and sell aircraft tires.........

Man, I am glad I got home in one piece. I have a bad feeling about this one but I agree with mirth that is way past time to use modern technology to get real time information.

[bayonetbrant]

from everything I've seen/heard, this is a pretty simple "went down in bad weather over mostly-shallow water" that should get answers in pretty quick time

anyone heard anything significantly different?

[jomni]

Nope that's about it.

Real time ACARS and black box streaming should be made mandatory.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Well if you go to nutbag sights like Alex Jones's, yet again there's some sort of government conspiracy happening. 

[jomni]

Probable plane parts, rafts and life jackets found. Could the passengers have deboarded the plane? http://www.channelnewsasia.com/mobile/asiapacific/items-resembling-slide/1557832.html

Update: body found.