AirAsia Flight 8501: What we know

AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared from radar screens Sunday with 162 people aboard. Here is what we know:

• The Airbus A320 flew out of Surabaya, Indonesia, at around 5:35 a.m. local time on Sunday (5:35 p.m. ET Saturday), bound for Singapore.

• Less than 40 minutes later, the pilot radioed air traffic control asking to increase the plane's altitude due to the weather. Heavy storms were reported in the area.

• Minutes later and about an hour before the plane was scheduled to land in Singapore, the plane lost contact with controllers and disappeared from radar.

• A daylong air and sea search failed to locate the plane or any debris. The air search was called off when darkness fell but is scheduled to resume at dawn.

• There were seven crew members and 155 passengers on board — with 138 adults, 16 children and one infant, the airline said in a statement. The passengers and crew included three South Koreans, a Malaysian, a French co-pilot, a British national and his 2-year-old Singaporean daughter. The rest were Indonesians.

• This is the third major air incident for Southeast Asia this year. On March 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people aboard. It remains missing. And on July 17, another Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine while on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The 298 people on board were killed.

Relatives cry and comfort each other as they wait for news about the missing AirAsia passenger jet on Dec. 29 at Juanda Airport in Surabaya, Indonesia. The aircraft with 162 people on board disappeared during a flight from Surabaya, East Java, to Singapore on Dec. 28. (Photo: Made Nagi, European 

Pressphoto Agency)