not just it is not just any old plane. this is a plane that most airlines have in their fleet because of its reliability, its safety, and its economics. all right. richard, stand by for us because i want to share with our viewers some information just coming in to us. this is a developing story. we want to bring our viewers the details immediately as they come in to us here at cnn. we re getting this statement, this more detailed singapore air traffic control was notified at 0754 sorry. that just moved. at 0754 this morning. 0724, i should say. that was the last time it made local contact with air traffic controllers. right now there is a crisis center set up. and the search and rescue operation is under way. and now this indonesia airasia aircraft qz 8501 was scheduled to arrive at 8:30 hours local time from surabaya.
have a repeat of 370 where they did not look at the radar immediately, where they did not look at every possible source to locate the plane. we ve learned from 370 that it is absolutely vital at this moment to grab every possible positioning clue that you can. you can t wait a minute. you can t wait an hour. they must grab all that radar now and start tracking it so it is not lost like 370. and as we look at this route, as we look at the route the flight was flying from surabaya, indonesia on its way to singapore, with what you know of the route itself is this an area that would have had military satellites that could have detected the plane? just trying to get a sense of, you know, tracking this aircraft. yes, this area as we learned from 370 does have military tracking. what was disconcerting about 370 is it appears it wasn t continuously monitored. but the information did come out that it does have military tracking and radar tracking. now, indonesia did not provide a lot of inf
fluctuating reports on the number of people on board. we have heard between 155 and 162 people on board the flight. indonesian tv is reporting that most of those on board were indonesian. although according to some reports we re hearing that three koreans, one passenger from singapore, one from the uk, and one from malaysia were also on board the flight. now, to tell us what airasia indonesia is saying at this point in time, a statement was released just a short time ago. let s bring that to you. it says, at the present time we unfortunately have no further information regarding the status of the passengers and crew members on board, but we will keep all parties informed as more information becomes available. now, joining me on the phone right now is the former inspector general of the u.s. department of transportation and cnn aviation analyst mary schiavo. mary, good to have you with us at this time. let me just ask you right off the bat what you make of all of this. well, a coupl
standard procedures for emergency don t seem to have been deployed. yeah. we ve heard from airasia saying they don t have much more information to share with us. but let me ask you this. what can you tell us about this route? is it a difficult one from surabaya, indonesia to singapore? well, it s difficult only in terms of, you know, you re flying around a number of different jurisdictions. you re flying sometimes in difficult weather over the oceans, land masses, ocean currents can send up particularly sometimes troublesome different currents into the air from the water mass versus the land mass. so it s difficult sometimes just flying throughout island areas and negotiating your way through different countries, flying from indonesia to singapore. but in this kind of modern airliner, no. basically, a 320 can fly anywhere in the world and they fly at such altitudes it should
there can be all it s not that unusual. i mean, obviously there is a logical way for getting from a to b. but as you re going along the way you may go one way versus the other. mary was saying quite properly, if there is some reason why he would want this, the pilot would want this different routing, one might expect him to say to air traffic control, i ve lost an engine, i m having difficulty with this, there s bad weather ahead, i ve got fuel problems, whatever it might be. you would expect him to have said that. we don t know yet that he didn t because at the moment we re dealing with this vacuum of information where somebody says he requested something and it is going to take an hour or two more before we can confirm or deny this. we are standing by for a statement from the malaysian transport minister. as you look at the situation, details are thin, so to speak. we don t have a lot. what is it that you want to hear?