An AirAsia plane flying between Surabaya and Singapore went missing this morning, as it lost contact with air traffic control at 7.24 Indonesia time.

Flight QZ8501  took off from Juanda International Airport in Surabaya at 5.35 am.

The plane, with 162 people aboard, had requested a deviation from its allotted flight path because of inclement weather.

There were more than a dozen other aircraft in the same region when the AirAsia plane went missing.

According to a list of passengers [PDF] released by Indonesian authorities, 23 passengers who had booked tickets failed to make it on board the plane. They included three infants and four children.

Here is a statement the airline released this morning.
The aircraft was an Airbus A320-200 with the registration number PK-AXC. There were two pilots, four flight attendants and one engineer on board.

The captain in command had a total of 6,100 flying hours and the first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours

 There were 155 passengers on board, with 138 adults, 16 children and 1 infant. Also on board were 2 pilots and 5 cabin crew.

Nationalities of passengers and crew onboard are as below:

1 Singapore

1 Malaysia

3 South Korean

157 Indonesia

 At this time, search and rescue operations are being conducted under the guidance of The Indonesia of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). AirAsia Indonesia is cooperating fully and assisting the investigation in every possible way.

The aircraft was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control (ATC).

The aircraft had undergone its last scheduled maintenance on 16 November 2014.