MANILA — There are no Filipinos in the AirAsia Airbus A320-200 flight QZ8501 that recently went reportedly missing on Sunday, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said.
In a statement, CAAP further said that the flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, did not pass thru the Philippine flight information region (FIR).
CAAP operation rescue and coordinating center (ORCC) explained that the flight path of the missing flight is far away from Philippine FIR and no record of such pass thru the Philippine air space.
The AirAsia flight has 155 passengers, seven crews on board when it lost contact 42 minutes after it took off.
It went missing after the pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather.
Reports showed that passengers and crew members include one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one French, three South Koreans, and 156 Indonesians.
This is not the first time a plane went missing this year. To recall, Malaysia’s national flag carrier, Malaysia Airlines, lost two aircraft this year.
Last March 8, flight MH370 went missing on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board and has still not been found.
After that incident, another plane, flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board last July 17.