Bangkok: AirAsia said the pilot of flight QZ8501 that went missing between Indonesia and Singapore early Sunday had requested "deviation" from the its flight plan because of bad weather.
"The aircraft... was requesting deviation due to enroute weather," the Malaysia-based carrier said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
"Communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control (ATC)," the airline said.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Airbus A320-200 around an hour after it left Juanda international airport at Surabaya in east Java, at 5:20am. It was scheduled to arrive in Singapore at 8:30am (0030 GMT).
The airline said theere were 155 passengers and seven crew member on board the flight. The airline said 155 of those on board Flight QZ 8501 were Indonesians, with three South Koreans and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain.
There were 138 adult passengers, 16 children and an infant, in addition to five cabin crew and the pilot and co-pilot, who is believed to be French.
The Indonesian air force said two of its planes had been dispatched to scour an area of the Java Sea, southwest of Pangkalan Bun in Kalimantan province -- around halfway along the flight's expected route.
"The weather is cloudy and the area is surrounded by sea. We are still on our way so we won't make an assumption on what happened to the plane," said air force spokesman Hadi Cahyanto.
The aircraft was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysian-based AirAsia which dominates Southeast Asia's booming low-cost airline market.
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