Search for AirAsia plane to resume at first light

Search and rescues officials called off the aerial search for flight QZ8501 for second day at dusk on Monday, with the operation to resume at first light on Tuesday. While the aerial search was suspended, some ships were to continue the search through the night.

So far the aircraft looking for the missing Airbus A320-200 have turned up little evidence, but an Australian plane reported spotting some debris in the general area where the plane is thought to have gone down and an Indonesian helicopter reporting seeing oil slicks in the Java Sea, off the island of Belitung island.

"We are making sure whether it was avtur (aviation fuel) from the AirAsia plane or from a vessel because that location is a shipping line," Indonesian Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto told the AFP news agency.

Officials have said that the oil slicks were much closer to where the plane lost contact with air traffic control than the "suspicious" objects spotted by the Australian aircraft.

Asked by reporters at a press conference where the plane was thought to be located, the head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, Bambang Soelistyo, said they were currently working on the assumption that it had crashed into the Java Sea.

"Based on our coordinates, we expect it is in the sea, so for now (we think) it is on the sea floor," he said.

Soelistyao added that Indonesia was coordinating with other countries to borrow any equipment needed to scour the seabed and that the area being searched would be expanded on Tuesday.

Request to change course denied

AirAsia flight QZ8501, carrying 162 people on board, was en route from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore when it disappeared from radar screens early on Sunday, shortly after the pilots had requested permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather. The request was refused due to heavy air traffic, officials said.

AirAsia gave the nationalities of those on board ad 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, as well as the co-pilot, a French national.

AirAsia Indonesia is a unit of Malaysia-based AirAsia which dominates the regional market for low-cost air travel and at least until now, had never suffered a fatal accident.

The apparent crash comes near the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian air travel.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with 239 people on board disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March and has yet to be found. In July flight MH17 was came down over eastern Ukraine - link:17909579:likely having been shot down# - over an area controlled by pro-Russia separatists.

pfd/sb (Reuters, AFP, AP)