And up front communications about what is happening. i understand the airlines have been issuing releasereleases but a few hours ago there wasn t actually a reference to this incident. so again, you really want the airlines to produce information as it becomes available. you want the governments to produce information as it becomes available because otherwise what tends to happen especially with these mysterious air disasters, there s a lot of media speculation. there s a lot of hype. there s a lot of stuff that gets out there on social media. and the various participants need to work to try to control this to keep the lid on it keep everybody calm until we get the real facts of the case emerge. what more can you tell us about airasia? some of our viewers watching our coverage may not know much about this airline. i know that earlier we referenced it as a budget
In particular airasia indonesia hasn t had any safety issues over the years. it s a low-cost airline. it s very popular. and the safety record is very strong. did i hear you say it s based in kuala lumpur malaysia? yeah. areas of the headquarters of airasia itself is in kuala lumpur. and then they have a franchise model for these other companies. and indonesia, they have indonesia airasia. that s like a franchise of the main parent. they have the thai unit as well. what this allows them to do is having these units overseas allows them to take advantage of opportunities in these other countries but yet get around some of these restrictions around airport ownership rules. airasia will order planes from airbus and then lease these planes out to these units around the region. as you were speaking we just saw the sign there at the
Leaving at such an early time in the morning, people can t be bothered to get up and get on the plane. so that was what i read when i saw that. but in terms of the route, very high traffic, very popular. nothing really unusual about it at all. all right. well thanks again. greg wald ronn the asian managing editor for flight global. you ve been very helpful in our breaking news coverage, and we appreciate your time and input. if you get anything else feel free to get in touch with our control room. we ll talk to you again. but thank you so much. we ll turn now to yusuf irafan. chief editor at cnn indonesia.com. thank you so much for joining us. we hear you have been monitoring some of the information coming out from the airline. and we didn t have translation earlier when they did make a brief announcement. so what have you been hearing?
More it s really those flight data recorders. it tells us so much, and it really pieces together so many questions we have at this hour. from the data recorders themselves we re going to learn about the plane s engines and the health of the plane itself. was there anything wrong with this plane from the cockpit data recorders. we ll also be able 20 hearto hear did the pilots say anything to each other, what kind of conversations were happening inside the cockpit. a lot of questions can be answered once we get our hands on those recorders. and c-130s are searching the water for now no sign of the planes. we have word on one of the ships headed to the area to search for the airplane. again, this is asia air, a very good safety record no frills airline. this is a tweet they put out. airasia indonesia regrets to confirm that qz 8501 from surabaya to singapore has lost
Airline. where does it fly? what are its destinations? what can you tell us? well airasia s been a phenomenal success story over the last few years. what they ve done is they ve really brought the low-cost model into the region. a gentleman named tony fernandes up in kuala lumpur. it s a kuala lumpur-based carrier. and airasia in malaysia has gloen explosively. they ve brachld outbranched out in other regions. in indonesia. thailand. they re also going to be flying to india as well. it s a very big airline and it has an enormous order book for a-320 aircraft. it s one of the fastest growing airlines in the world, and it s really feeding living off that demand for low-cost air travel in southeast asia and the broader asia pacific. safety record is decent.