thunderstorms obviously giving the pilot good reason to redirect their route as they were flying north toward singapore. but keep in mind that turbulence doesn t necessarily bring down an airplane. it usually leads to other human factors. we recall the air france tragedy back in june of 2009. that was attributed to some form of bad weather, and unfortunately the pilot did make an error in rerouting the plane around the thunderstorm that developed, ultimately taking down the air france plane. this is all speculatery of what s actually taking place. all of the information is so new with this particular instance here with airasia. but there s one thing for certain. this is a very active weather pattern across this part of the world. in fact, you can see this moisture flow that s just coming down from the south china sea. this is a northeasterly wind that builds up. all kinds of moisture.
one from the uk, and one from malaysia also on board that flight. airasia indonesia released a statement which reads in part, 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. we will do the same for you here at cnn. we are closely following this breaking news story. we will bring you those developments. for our international viewers, backstory is next. for our viewers in the ut, we retu return you now to the hunt. wetterling was abducted at gunpoint last night while rising his bike with two other boys. certainly nothing has happened at school with jacob. i m not aware of having any enemies. i m like staring in la-la land. i know i was in shock.
it lost contact with jakarta air traffic control, as i said, at 0724 hours local time sunday. now, singapore air traffic control was informed of the loss of contact at 0754 hours by jakarta air traffic control. these are the new details that i was just referencing. so the plane lost contact with air traffic control at 0724 a.m. the authorities were alerted at 7:54 a.m. so it took a matter of some 30 minutes. the indonesia air information region when contact was lost was more than 200 southeast of the singapore jakarta boundary. some details that were just put out for me. we haven t had time to go through them ourselves to actually make some sense of it. richard, were you listening to that information that was just coming in to us which i ll share with our viewers in real time? 7:24 it lost local it lost contact local time. 7:54 before singapore air
the others, three koreans, one from singapore, one from the uk, and one individual from malaysia. i want to bring you the statement that we re just getting from airasia indonesia. they ve confirmed in a statement that flight qz 8501 from surabaya to singapore lost contact with air traffic control at 7:24 a.m. local time sunday morning. the statement goes on to say this the at 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, to remind you once again, that this aircraft was an airbus a-32200. and at this time search and rescue operations are in progress. we are closely monitoring this story for you, that an airasia flight from the indonesian city of surabaya on its way to singapore has lost contact with air traffic controllers with 155 people on board.
this ability of satellite tracking on the plane can actually do it. so what we don t know at this point, whether this aircraft had that kind of capability. but we do have the advantage right now to track it on radar. and the airbus 320, give us a little back story to it. its safety record. this is a plane that works hard, works tirelessly, flies all over the world. that s right. the 320 is a workhorse. it s basically in use around the world. it doesn t have any particul particular if you had any kind of mechanical mayday, in an emergency a pilot is trained to let air traffic control know about that. so it s disconcerting that they did not pass on that kind of information right off the bat. you re trained in flight school, when i was trained, first thing you do if you re having difficulty is tell air traffic controllers what your difficulty is. so now that they know it s missing hopefully they won t