the plane lost contact with air traffic control at 7:24 a.m. a little less than two hours after it took off. it was originally scheduled to arrive after 8:30 a.m. in singapore. excuse me. that would be about there s an hour change difference. so again, not to be confusing here but it is a two-hour flight. singapore is one hour ahead of surabaya. but as we mentioned, there was weather in the area that could have slowed down the arrival time considerably. and we should also tell you that contact had been lost for a few hours before the airline, airasia confirmed that the plane was missing. so some serious lag time there before this was made apparent to family members that were there perhaps waiting in singapore and to the public at large. cnn s will ripley is with us from beijing. and it is surreal, will. that we ve had two planes that
have gone missing flying over water in the same year and airasia is based in kuala lumpur in malaysia which is just to the north of singapore on that map we ve been showing. very different circumstances. but here we are again with a mystery for mow. surreal is exactly the word to describe it natalie. i had the same feeling you did when i heard that music playing, the music we heard in our ears every day for almost three months as we covered and then in subsequent weeks beyond. it consumed a lot of people s lives in this part of the world. when mh 370 disappeared, certainly right here in beijing. i did want to touch on the information and the way it s distributed to passengers because here in beijing there were more than 150 passengers that were supposed to arrive. the plane was supposed to arrive here. and it was more than an hour after the plane was supposed to land that the airline even
indonesia. hello again, i m natalie allen from cnn center. search and rescue operations under way right now for a missing air asia airplane. flight 8501 was en route from the indonesian city of surabaya. there it is at the bottom of your screen. to singapore. just a two-hour flight. when it lost contact with air traffic control early sunday morning. most of the plane s flight path took it over open water. there were we re told heavy thunderstorms in the area and the pilot asked to change the route because of the weather. apparently trying to vector around some serious storms. soon after that request was made contact with the airplane was lost. this is a picture here of the missing plane. it again is an airbus a-320 with airasia airlines a no-frills airline has got an excellent safety record. 162 people were listed on the
disappearance of mh370 earlier this year. but now we have another airline, airasia and another airplane with 162 people on board. it is missing. we will bring you the very latest on the search what happened, what we know, right after this. (cough, cough) mike? janet? cough if you can hear me. don t even think about it. i took mucinex dm for my phlegmy cough. yeah.but what about mike? he has that dry, scratchy thing going on. guess what? (cough!) it works on his cough too. what? stop, don t pull me! spoiler alert! she doesn t make it! only mucinex dm packs 2 medicines in one pill to relieve wet and dry coughs for 12 hours. start the relief. ditch the misery. let s end this.
singapore airport. it s kind of creepy to see yet another sign that you know that flight there on that board did not land. we remember mh 370 they had put delayed on 370 there in the airport in china. here we have qz8501 go into foe counter. that sounds very formal. but we can tell people we are told that the airline has set up of course a crisis center to help deal with families there in singapore. and we hope that is the case and they are being comforted at had time. let s go back to it is really surreal that now we have another airliner based in kuala lumpur same year as mh 370. but different circumstances. different water as well.