Missing flight caps year of woe in aviation

A sign board instructing relatives and next-of-kin of the passengers of AirAsia flight QZ8501 to gather at a holding area is placed at the Changi International Airport where the flight from Surabaya was scheduled to land.

This year began with the aviation industry celebrating a century of passenger flights - it ends with a jet with 162 aboard missing while flying from Indonesia to Singapore.

Since the first commercial flight in Tampa, Florida, on January 1, 1914, safety has been a preoccupation of the industry and the rate of commercial aviation fatalities had been trending down for the three billion people who fly every year. But 2014 has been different. Plane crashes in Mali, Taiwan and most prominently the loss of two Malaysia Airlines planes had pushed the number of fatalities to close to 800, the worst year since 2010.

And yesterday, flight QZ8501 belonging to AirAsia Indonesia - a carrier that had its origins in Malaysia - lost contact with air traffic controllers after requesting a new flight path because of bad weather and has not been heard from since.

Kuala Lumpur-based AirAsia perfectly fits the model of a number of aggressive and successful low budget carriers that have taken off in Southeast Asia - modern planes, low labour costs, quick turnaround times and, for passengers, a DIY ethos.

In the passenger-voted Skytrax awards it has taken the "world's best low-cost airline" for six years in a row. AirAsia has spread to five other countries with joint ventures in the region, including Indonesia.

Since AirAsia started in 2001, there have, reportedly, been no fatal crashes or serious safety issues. Its international long-haul arm AirAsia X (which flew for around a year between Kuala Lumpur and Christchurch, until 2012 ) gets a moderate four out of seven for safety, according to AirlineRatings.com.

The missing A320 aircraft at just over six years old is nearly twice the average age of the AirAsia fleet, which the airline says is one of the youngest in the region.

It had undergone its last scheduled maintenance a little over a month ago and was flown by pilots with more than 8000 flying hours between them.

The A320 is the backbone of airlines throughout Asia - where it was quickly added to fleets - and the world over, including carriers here. Of more than 3600 of the planes in service there have been just 26 serious accidents since the 1980s reported to the middle of the year, with just over 600 fatalities.

With any aircraft loss there are no simple, single answers but a combination of factors, and this will be the case if QZ8501 has crashed.

Airline tragedies

MH17

• Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down on July 17 over territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists. New Zealanders Rob Ayley and Mary Menke were among the 298 killed.

• The first sections of wreckage arrived in the Netherlands this month.
MH370

• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. New Zealanders Paul Weeks and Ximin Wang were among the 239 on board.

• It probably crashed in the Indian Ocean, but search teams have found no trace of it.

• Australia's Transportation Safety Bureau has been leading a deep-sea search for the plane over a 55,000sq km priority area.