can look at a specific location. at this point they can t. because there are so many boats and ships and helicopters, they have to cordon this off carefully. they have to narrow it down and sliced it up into sections to make sure that they are not overlapping areas and not missing any areas. to make sure they are very systematic about this. i asked the officer here whether or not the lead that could be any survivors this late on. he said if it landed on water or crashed into the water, it is highly unlikely. but if this plane crashed on land and he said there is a potential the jungles to the east of this area potentially there could be survivors. christine. paula hancocks, so many questions and so many hopes for the families. thank you, paula. a lot of questions surrounding the weather. what role did the weather play in the flight? we know the pilot asked for and denied a higher altitude before
charge of the whole what he still term a search as rescue operation. he is here at surabaya airport. he is talking to the families of the victims. he cannot offer much more than that. there is still little to go on. there are reports that there was debris spotted by the australian search team. i asked the vice president about that in the interview here. this is what he had to say. there have been reports of objecting floating in the search zone. can you tell me do you know if they are linked at all to the missing plane? until now, to answer not yet. some report from australia, but we are not yet clear the object is from the plane or not. reporter: so not yet clear whether that has been actually part of the plane or linked to the plane. i talked to experts here from
8501. we have about an hour or two hours of day light left. it is a big search crew out there. as yet, nothing concrete. andrew any sense of what investigators are honing in on the most right now? is it the last verbal contact with the pilots asking for a higher attitude? reporter: it seems to be that yes. the last known communication was one of the pilots requesting a diversion asking to go higher. that was actually refused because there were aircraft above flight 8501. 8501 requested to turn left, which was given permission to do so. that was the last known conversation with the cockpit. extrapolating from there, they are looking at the most likely zone where the plane may have gone down. remember, there was bad weather. some say severe weather in the area at the time. the pilot looked like he requested that deviation to get above the bad weather. obviously he did not get it.
had a spotless safety record with no crashes in more than a decade of operations. it is best low cost operations. airasia s ceo is using social media. in a series of tweets tony fernandes called this his worst nightmare. keeping positive and staying strong. my heart bleeds for our crew and our passengers. those posts have been retweeted thousands of times. a new way of dealing with the public in a crisis i think. social media. also a new way for dealing with the crisis in a year with several very high profile crises and different reactions. early start continues right now. announcer: this is cnn breaking news. grim news this morning in the search. the desperate search for airasia flight 8501. investigators revealing now they believe the missing plane and
reporter: we want to give you meaning to the numbers. 162 souls on board the airasia flight that disappeared. 162 people with their unique stories. we know they were from a number of backgrounds. majority of those on the flight, 155 passengers 7 crew from indonesia with a handful from south korea. others from malaysia and singapore and two people from europe. one u.k. national and one from europe. the media reported the name of the co- pilot. rammi rassel. they are working with the indonesian government to try to find the whereabouts of the missing plane. another number confirmed is that of the british national who is indonesian based executive. cho chi man. it is a heart breaking story when you learn he was traveling with his 2-year-old daughter.