YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. There are no Armenians in missing AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 to Singapore. The Spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Tigran Balayan informed “Armenpress” about this. Among other things, Tigran Balayan underscored: “We got in touch with the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia to Jakarta in the morning and definitely clarified that there were no Armenian citizens in the missing aircraft.”

An AirAsia Indonesia airliner flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has gone missing.

Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at 06:24 local time (23:24 GMT Saturday) over the Java Sea.

The plane, an Airbus A320-200, disappeared midway into the flight of more than two hours from the city of Surabaya. No distress call was made.

Bad weather was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night.

Planes from Indonesia and Singapore had been scouring an area of sea between Kalimantan (Borneo) and Java. Some boats were reported to be continuing to search as night fell.

No wreckage has been found, an Indonesian official told the BBC.

AirAsia's Chief Executive Tony Fernandes, who has flown to Surabaya, said: "We don't want to speculate but right now of course the plane has been missing for 12 hours and there's a deep sense of depression here.