© East News/ AP
An AirAsia aircraft has reportedly made an emergency landing due to technical problems during its flight from Penang to Langkawi (Malaysia) hours after another of the company's planes went missing.
AirAsia's flight AK6242 en route from Penang to Langkawi has made an emergency landing due to technical problems, the Malaysian New Strait Times newspaper said on Twitter.
Earlier in the day, another AirAsia aircraft, flight QZ8501, en route from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore lost contact with air traffic control and went missing with 162 people on board.
Search and rescue operations are being conducted in the Java Sea by the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas), but no traces of the aircraft have been found so far.
AirAsia issued a statement confirming the crash of the aircraft due to bad weather conditions. Nevertheless, the Indonesian Ministry of Transportation said it was too early to confirm this information.
AirAsia Indonesia operates domestic flights within the Indonesian archipelago and international flights to Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Thailand. The company is an affiliate of the Malaysian company AirAsia. In 2007, AirAsia Indonesia was banned from operating flights to the European Union (EU) due to safety concerns; however, the ban was lifted in July 2010, the BBC reports.
Watch this sort of thing more closely. The dominant theory is that it takes a very long time, but computer modelling by others has shown it can happen a lot faster than many are comfortable with.