Annus horribilis for Malaysia as AirAsia plane goes missing

To say this has been a bad year for Malaysia would be an understatement. Now air traffic control has lost contact with an AsiaAsia plane from Surabaya to Singapore with over 160 passengers on board.

Contact was lost here:

“The aircraft was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost (at 7.24am) while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control (ATC),” said AirAsia in a statement.

The plane, an Airbus A320-216 delivered in 2008, registration PK-AXC, was believed to be flying at 32000 feet above sea level.  An Indonesian air transport director was reported to have said the plane asked to increase altitude to 38000 feet from 32000 feet to “avoid clouds”.

The flight, QZ8501, had taken off from Juanda International Airport in Surabaya at 5.35am and was scheduled to arrive in Singapore at 8.30am.

Singapore air traffic control was informed at 7.54am and crisis management centres in Singpore were activated.

The aircraft had undergone its last scheduled maintenance on 16 November 2014. The captain of the flight, Iriyanto, had clocked 6100 flying hours while first officer Remi Emmanuel Plesel had put in 2275 hours

The Indonesian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is guiding search and rescue operations with the cooperation of AirAsia Indonesia. The Singapore Rescue Coordination Centre has offered help.

The passenger manifest can be found here.

This incident today comes after two major aircraft incidents (MH370 and MH17) earlier this year.

It comes at a time when bodies are showing up in Penang and tens of thousands have been displaced by massive floods in the East Coast and elsewhere. The floods have forced the hudud vote in Kelantan, originally scheduled for tomorrow, to be shelved.

The Federal Court decision on the Allah controversy caused a fissure, which has not yet been resolved, while confiscated Malay-language Bibles were finally returned without an apology. Groups such as Perkasa and Isma spew out their right-wing ethno-religious rhetoric while national leaders remain largely silent.

Meanwhile, 1MDB bleeds red ink, commodity prices have plunged, falling oil prices have hurt the fiscal balance, and the KLSE index has plummeted. Even national badminton hero Lee Chong Wei was not spared a dramatic fall after failing a substance test.

But not everything has fallen. The cost of living has soared even before GST, hurting many Malaysians. Household debt and government federal debt have similarly risen.

Rampant corruption and cronyism continues unabated while the Sedition Act has been used to slam down hard on opposition politicians, student leaders and other critics.

There’s not a whole lot of positive energy over this land at this time. A lot of suffering, despair and darkness instead.

If you believe in God or a transcendental power, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to say a prayer for Malaysia and all the victims of these disasters now. Ask for light, hope, justice and peace to fill our land.