Vice President To Meet Relatives Of Missing AirAsia Aircraft

Jakarta, Dec 29 (Antara) - Vice President Jusuf M. Kalla and Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture (PMK) Puan Maharani will visit Surabaya, East Java, on Monday, to meet the relatives of the passengers aboard the missing AirAsia aircraft. "The visit is also to review the condition of the crisis center at Juanda Airport in Surabaya," Husain Abdullah, a spokesman of the vice president, noted here on Monday. Kalla along with his spouse, Mufidah Kalla, and Maharani will leave for Surabaya at 1 p.m. local time. Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan will also join the entourage. The Singapore-bound plane, an Airbus A320-200, lost contact a few minutes after taking off from Juanda International Airport on Sunday morning, and was believed to have gone missing in the waters between Bangka Belitung and West Kalimantan Provinces. The AirAsia aircraft, an Airbus 320-200, carried 155 passengers and seven crew members. Based on the data received from the Angkasa Pura I airport management company, the plane has two pilots - Captain Iriyanto and First Officer (FO) Remi Emmanuel Plesel, four cabin crew members - Wanti Setiawati, Khairunnisa Haidar Fauzi, Oscar Desano, and Wismoyo Ari Prambudi, along with a technician, Saiful Rakhmad. According to AirAsia Indonesia, seven foreigners are among the passengers of the missing plane. The foreign nationals comprise three Koreans, a Singaporean, a British, a Malaysian, and a First Officer (FO) from France. "While 155 others, including crew members, are Indonesian nationals," she stated. In the meantime, the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) is focusing its search efforts on East Belitung waters to find the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 on Monday, the second day of the search and rescue operations. "We are conducting search operations in the east off Belitung Island, in accordance with the last contact made by the aircraft," Basarnas` Operations Director Air Commodore S.B. Supriyadi noted on Monday. Basarnas will conduct combing operations in the waters off east Belitung Island to the southeast. "Later, we will also comb the coastal areas of West Kalimantan," he added.