Families of AirAsia flight passengers given support through the 'nightmare' 
 
 International search team 
 
 Since the flight disappeared in Indonesian airspace, Indonesia is heading up search efforts. The plane was flying from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, and was about halfway to its destination, Singapore, when it vanished from radar. A: It is way too early to know for sure, but here are some options. "It is not easy, of course ... the operation in the sea, especially in the bad weather like this," Kalla said. Before the plane, an Airbus A320-200, lost contact with air traffic controllers, one of the pilots asked to change course and fly at a higher altitude because of bad weather, officials said. Air traffic control approved the pilot's request to turn left but denied permission for the plane to climb to 38,000 feet from 32,000 feet, Djoko Murjatmodjo, an aviation official at the Indonesian Transport Ministry, told the national newspaper Kompas. AirAsia and MH370 cases are very different 
 
 Searchers have yet to find any remains of Flight 370, which officials believe went down in the southern Indian Ocean after mysteriously flying thousands of kilometers away from its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. That belief is based on the plane's flight track and last known coordinates, he said. Flight 8501 was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a subsidiary that's 49 percent owned by the Malaysian parent company. Of the people on board the passenger jet, 155 are Indonesian, three are South Korean, one is British, one is French, one is Malaysian and one is Singaporean, the airline said. But authorities don't know whether there's any connection to the missing jet. "We are talking about congested airspace around Southeast Asia. So far, officials say, none of them have panned out. The plane, flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, went missing as it flew over the Java Sea between the islands of Belitung and Borneo -- a heavily traveled shipping channel with shallow waters -- Indonesian authorities said. The chartered Airbus A320 that will take families from Surabaya over the zone has room for as many as 180 people, he said. The MH370 mystery 
 
 AirAsia, a successful budget airline group headquartered in Malaysia, had a clean safety record until the disappearance of Flight 8501. But Kalla said his country will not give up or set a time limit for the operation. Local media in Indonesia reported the smoke was seen on Long Island, one of thousands that make up the archipelago that forms Indonesia. Paul Wiseman in Washington also contributed to this report.
– The disappearance of another jet in Southeast Asia while the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 remains a mystery comes as a shock to the aviation world, but experts stress that the two cases are very different. The New York Times runs through some of the differences with AirAsia Flight 8501: Unlike with Flight 370, there has been no sign that anybody on Flight 8501 intentionally disabled any onboard systems, meaning that investigators should have the normal automatic transmissions from the flight to help the search. Flight 370 disappeared on a clear night, while Flight 8501 was believed to have encountered stormy weather, with weather agencies having reported lightning strikes along its route. The AirAsia pilot's last communication with air traffic control was a request "to avoid clouds by turning left and going higher to 38,000 feet." Flight 370's pilot was very experienced, with more than 18,000 hours of flying time, while the combined experience of Flight 8501's pilot and co-pilot is believed to be less than half that. Neither Flight 370 nor Flight 8501 issued an emergency distress call, but, as the AP notes, "pilots are trained to focus first on the emergency at hand and then communicate only when free," and there's no sign that the AirAsia flight diverted sharply from its intended course the way the Malaysia Airlines flight did. Another major difference is the search area for Flight 8501, which is much smaller and shallower than the vast area that has been searched for Flight 370. "We are not talking about the deep Indian Ocean here," says CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest. "We are talking about congested airspace around Southeast Asia. There will be much better radar coverage. There's certainly better air traffic control coverage."