AirAsia jet disappears amid stormy weather

The fate of an AirAsia jet that disappeared Sunday over the Java Sea with 162 people aboard remained a mystery more than 18 hours after it vanished in violent weather.

Flight 8501 was bound for Singapore from Surabaya, Indonesia, when it lost contact with air traffic control at about 7:24 a.m. (6:24 p.m. ET on Saturday), the airline said in a statement. The time in Surabaya is 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time; Singapore is 13 hours ahead of ET.

Indonesia called off the daylong air search for the night at about 7 a.m. ET. Achmad Toha, an official with the country's search and rescue agency, said some search ships were still in the area. The air search was set to resume at dawn Monday.

"We have no idea at the moment what went wrong," said Tony Fernandes, a Malaysian businessman and CEO of the regional low-cost carrier. "Let's not speculate at the moment."

The apparent tragedy marks the third commercial air disaster in Southeast Asia this year. On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine while on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people on board. And mystery still shrouds Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared without a trace en route to Beijing on March 8.

Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation, said that minutes before the AirAsia flight disappeared from radar, the pilot asked air traffic control for permission to avoid a cloud bank by turning left and going higher, to 34,000 feet. Flight 8501 gave no distress signal, he said.

AccuWeather meteorologist Tyler Roys told USA TODAY the area along the flight path at that time was blasted by a string of severe thunderstorms.

"It's hard to say if 34,000 feet would have been enough," Roys said. "We know the thunderstorms were very tall, very high up. They could have encountered severe turbulence, strong wind shear, lightning and even icing at that altitude."