On Sunday morning, Air Asia confirmed that it had lost contact with one of its planes travelling from Indonesia to Singapore. Flight QZ8501, an Airbus 320-200 that lost contact with Surabaya airport only 42 minutes after the take-off at 5.35 am local time, had 162 people on board.
The airline said that the plane had request a change in its allotted flight route because of bad weather just before losing contact.
This has been a bad year for air travel. In March, a Malaysia Airlines plane from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished with 239 people aboard. In July, another Malaysia Airlines Flight was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.
But this has actually been one of the safest years for air travel, according to the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives. In recent years, the total number of accidents has actually declined. The highest number of crashes occurred in 1944, which recorded 715. Until December 24 this year, 2014 had recorded 114 aviation accidents.
This has been despite the enormous increase in the volume of air traffic over the past seven decades, indicating better safety procedures overall.
Even in terms of the number of fatalities, 2014 is far from being the worst year in aviation history (not counting the missing AirAsia plane).
The data for 2014 is compiled till December 24.
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The airline said that the plane had request a change in its allotted flight route because of bad weather just before losing contact.
This has been a bad year for air travel. In March, a Malaysia Airlines plane from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished with 239 people aboard. In July, another Malaysia Airlines Flight was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.
But this has actually been one of the safest years for air travel, according to the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives. In recent years, the total number of accidents has actually declined. The highest number of crashes occurred in 1944, which recorded 715. Until December 24 this year, 2014 had recorded 114 aviation accidents.
This has been despite the enormous increase in the volume of air traffic over the past seven decades, indicating better safety procedures overall.
Even in terms of the number of fatalities, 2014 is far from being the worst year in aviation history (not counting the missing AirAsia plane).
The data for 2014 is compiled till December 24.