Sunday after
takeoff from the Juanda International
Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia,
the airline said on its Facebook page.
The aircraft was on its submitted flight
plan route and the pilot asked for
permission from air controllers to fly at a
higher altitude due to weather,
Bloomberg.com cited Indonesian officials
as saying .
It had been flying at an altitude of 9,753
meters (32,000 feet). The pilot asked to
climb to 11,582 meters (38,000 feet).
Air controllers refused the request to go
to a higher altitude because of another
plane at that altitude but did allow a turn
to the left, an Indonesia government
official told Kompas, an Indonesia
newspaper.
There were thunderstorms along the
flight path, AccuWeather.com
Meteorologist Dave Samuhel said.
"It's very active this time of year.
December and January are the wettest
times of the year in Indonesia," Samuhel
said.
The storms in the area were capable of
producing severe turbulence, strong wind
shear, frequent lightning and icing,
AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist
Alex Sosnowski said.
There were thunderstorms along the
flight path of the AirAsia flight that went
missing en route to Singapore on
Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014.
Wind shear is a rapid change in wind
direction and speed over a short
distance.
"It is for these reasons that pilots may
request permission to deviate from their
flightpath by going around or above the
weather," Sosnowski said.
Search and rescue crews from Indonesia,
Singapore and Malaysia were searching
for the aircraft on Monday after the
search was suspended late Sunday due
to darkness and more thunderstorms in
the region.
Indonesia accepted Singapore's offer of
two teams of specialists and two sets of
underwater locator beacon detectors to
assist in locating the flight data recorders
of the missing aircraft, the Civil Aviation
Authority of Singapore said on its
Facebook page .
Thunderstorms will continue to be
scattered across the original flight path
through the middle of the week,
Sosnowski said.
The aircraft was an Airbus A320-200 with
162 people on board, AirAsia said in a
statement.
The aircraft was delivered to AirAsia from
the production line in October 2008,
Airbus said in a statement . It had about
23,000 flight hours in nearly 13,600
flights.
