figure out what went wrong because there's so many of these aircraft in the air as we speak. >> yes. as you say a320 the work horse, a lot of passengers have questions. stay with us. we'll pause for a moment to restock at the top of the hour and continue the breaking news coverage. good morning, everyone i'm suzanne malveaux in for christi paul. >> i'm victor blackwell. 8:00 here on the east coast. we continue our breaking news coverage of this search at sea. now suspended, more than 12 hours after a passenger jet with 162 people on board went missing in southeast asia. officials say large ships with powerful lights will continue to comb the waters off indonesia for airasia 8501. >> the airbus a3200 left

indonesia at 5:30 eastern last night bound for singapore. indonesian officials say in about 45 minutes later the captain asked to climb above 38,000 feet because of torrential weather. minutes later the plane disappeared from radar. now airline officials say they lost contact at 7:24 eastern, though indonesian authorities say they actually monitored the jet for another half hour before losing contact. now the flight was due to land at 8:30 eastern last night. now families desperate as you can imagine for any sign of what might have happened to this plane and this is all unfolding. as you know, less than ten months after malaysia airlines flight 370 went missing enout from kuala lumpur to beijing and despite a massive international search effort there is still no trace of that aircraft or the 239 people on board.

joining us on the phone aviation correspondent richard quest. richard, we've been talking all morning about the potential, the possibility of what went wrong with this plane and this flight and we have heard from multiple sources that we know there were a number of weather conditions, very poor weather conditions that might have had a real impact on this plane. >> yes. good morning. obviously you start the investigation into this sort of incident looking at where the, what is the last known event. here we have the last known event being this request to climb to a higher altitude because of the weather. and you work backwards from that to work out what might have happened, the sort of issues that were involved. all sorts of speculation what speed the plane was traveling at. there were suing begs it was slow. we don't know at this moment.

what we can say that this is so far, the search has been suspended because it's nighttime. dangerous to search at night especially due to low overnight. if this plane came out of the air at a high altitude, if this is what happened then there will be wreckage to be found. >> richard, a lot of people are waking up and turning on television to see another missing jet, especially in this part of the world. could you compare and contrast for us the differences you see even so early in the search between the search for 370 and the search for this one. >> absolutely. what we have at the moment is a situation that frankly is exactly the same as malaysia 370 in those first couple of hours. where you have a missing plane. over water. and a search-and-rescue

operation is under way. at that point the similarities come to an end because unless there's any reason to believe that this plane, anything else has happened and we have no reason to believe that anything else different from an accidents has happened with this aircraft. in time they will be able to locate some form of wreckage over the water. now, in air france 470 that took several days before they were able to find the wreckage. in that case, remember, you were talking about the south atlantic ocean. it was quite a long way offshore. it was going to take a lot longer. here we're talking about the java sea, and they will be able to get boats on to the area, the last known location where the aircraft was spotted and able to get them there a lot quicker so i think that's -- in the first

hours, victor similarity but that's where it epidemics. >> can you tell us about the timeline. they will not resume until 6:00 in the morning local time. what do we make of what potentially we could learn in the next couple of hours even though it is nighttime? >> right. we aren't going to learn that from the actual scene and dangerous to search at night. low flights over water are tricky in the best of times. at night you're not going to do it. certainly boats remain on site. ships will remain on site. they will have their search lights on but not a full scale search at night. in the hours ahead that will pick up. what we're looking at elsewhere, we're looking for any information on the sort of reporting that the aircraft will have done. we know it didn't have inmarsat but what information was sent to indonesia, what radar telemetry do they have either from the

indonesian, singaporeans or any other neighboring countries. this flight was over water yes. it went over indonesia out to the java sea and northwest. but highly traveled airspace. this is not the south indian ocean. there are planes crisscrossing these pieces of water every hour of every day. so that there will be good or should be good radar telemetry of what was going on and the last known reporting and that's what they will be analyzing overnight. >> we think back to 370 last point of contact was quite some distant from credible search areas. do you think this plane if it indeed went down is not in the java sea, it's somewhere else in that neighborhood? >> at this point to suggest to speculate or to even contemplate, victor, another 370 situation would be counter

intuitive to every plane incident i ever covered. the plane is normally, you know, i'm aware that on the night they find it in the gulf of thailand and they didn't. but there's no reason to suspect at this point -- they have a really good idea where the last known part of the aircraft was. now the transponder was on and still transmitting information. they will be able to work out pretty quickly where the aircraft is likely to have come down and then start to find it from that. to go to the next stage could it have veered off in a different direction, you'll have some form of electronic fingerprint of where the plane was. >> richard, is it possible that -- do we know whether or not the plane at this point would have run out of fuel.

is it possible it's still flying or very unlikely that that is a scenario, that it has -- >> first of all, it wouldn't have had that much fuel or enough fuel to get from indonesia up to singapore and an alternative and enough fuel to get back again. but certainly it would have been fuel exhausted many hours by now. and the issue, i mean could it of a run out of fuel during the flight. highly unlikely. what we're looking for here is the pilot giving some sort of warning, some sort of may day, and what we have is a pilot asking for higher altitude because of bad weather. and that's where the starting point has to be in putting the jigsaw puzzle together on what might have happened to that plane. >> all right. richard quest, cnn aviation correspondent. richard thank you so much. we'll be speaking with you

throughout morning. 162 people, again. we have to remember at the center of this. there are 162 families who are waiting for some word on their loved ones. 155 were passengers. seven crew members here. they are from six different nations, 155 from indonesia, three from south korea, one each from malaysia, singapore, united kingdom and one also from france. now we know that the one french national on board is the first officer of the plane. that means he was the co-pilot, french foreign ministry confirmed that and they have spoken to his family and made aware of the situation. french authorities are working in close collaboration with the indonesian government to locate this plane. i want to go now to beijing and cnn's will riply. will, i'm reading your updates as well and you bring up an important point that richard touched on for just a moment. but this portion of the java sea is a popular shipping channel and i imagine that has pros and

cons. the pros you have some civilian ships out there that could spot this or could join the search. the cons in search for wreckage there might be so much debris there that there might be a lot of false positive, a lot of false items identified. so help us understand what this search area looks like. >> reporter: well, certainly the way that this is going to work given it is a heavily traveled shipping area and these are shallow waters, the visual search will certainly by air will happen at first light as well as ships. they will be looking when the sun comes up visually on the surface for debris. using side scan sonar. what ships are doing right now, what the larger ships can do and will do is they will stop for the evening and turn on their own big search lights. and those search lights will scan the water. perhaps some and we don't know what's happening on those ships but presumably if they have large search lights there will

be people at all hours at least monitoring the surroundings as they would normally and if they spot anything, any debris, any survivors they would alert. sign that sense do you have a lot more eye balls that are out there even in these evening hours and certainly than there were in the search for 370 in the southern indian ocean which took a long time for ships to get out to the search zone doing through from treacherous waters. and this is monsoon season and three storms converging on that area it's still sailable and flyable. there are flights going through that area every day at all hours of the day. but the really big search, victor, will happen in the morning and this is just going to have to be such an agonizing night for these families. because until they have answers, one way or the other, they are clinging on to hope that perhaps -- perhaps their loved ones might be still alive. they are waiting for that word.

they don't know and won't know until they get the answer about what happened to this plane, an answer that we likely won't have for a while, at least, during the overnight hours into tomorrow morning here. >> will, i imagine this will be a different scenario than the mh-370 situation just because we're dealing with a smaller area of sea as opposed to the last time where you had a lot of those false reports about which is junk that they were finding from the sea and debris that didn't have anything to do with the plane. the family members who are gathered there are isolated from others in the airport, certainly a lesson learned from the last go around. what kind of information are they getting? what are they telling them? what kind of resources do they have now to deal with this moment, with this very trying, very emotional time? >> reporter: will, you make an excellent point it's important to keep them separate unlike what was happening at the

airport in kuala lumpur. i remember certain family members wailing because they felt they weren't getting information, they felt the airline wasn't communicating directly with them and so they came out pleading for help to the immediate jane tears. they were swarmed. became an emotional situation. the energy from the press and victims' families kept feeding off of each other. it was a very, very difficult and damaging situation. it was an awful thing to see when that happened. what we're hearing in indonesia nothing like that. there's a room set up in surabaya for these families to gather. they have the airport is, of course, giving them with all the provisions they need to stay there as long as they need, food, water, that sort of thing. there are experts on hand, crisis counselors and more, i can guarantee being deployed. we know asia -- airasia ceo on his way as well, if he hasn't arrived all already will be communicating directly with families. you can bet he'll meet with them personally. it seems as if the approach is

transparency. they don't know the answers yet, they don't know what's happened to this plane. but they will deliver that information to the families first as they learn it so the families don't have to learn about it on the news. >> that's such an important point because we had seen just how the emotional roller coaster that so many of those passengers went through the last time and clearly a lot of tension with the airline and a lot of misinformation in the weeks and months that played out there. thank you so much. we appreciate your time. we want to tell our audience to bring you up to speed we've been following the breaking news from the early, early morning. it's 8:14 local time in the evening in indonesia and that's where surabaya in indonesia, the airport there where people are waiting to find out what has happened to this missing flight airasia flight 8501.

it was just supposed to be a couple of hours leaving surabaya going to singapore. 45 minutes into that flight is when they lost contact. a pilot did communicate asking to divert the route because of severe weather and then communication was lost. we have been following the story ever since to find out as much as we can about the fate of that plane and the passenger and crew on board. we'll have much more information after a quick break.

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the breaking news coverage this morning, nighttime search at sea now suspended almost 13 hours after a passenger jet with 162 people on board went missing in southeast asia. >> officials say large ships now with powerful lights will continue to comb the waters off of indonesia for airasia 8501

but more intensive efforts they have been paused until daybreak. >> we just got an update about the u.s. resources potentially that will be involved and a pentagon spokesman says that right now pacific command does not have any assets supporting the search for this airasia flight. that could change. but that just came in just a couple of minutes ago that no u.s. assets are involved in the pacific command at least in the search for this flight. now let's talk about the flight. it's an airbus a 320 200. it left last night on what was slate ad three hour flight to singapore. pretty routine. airline officials say they lost contact with the jet at 7:24 last night. >> heavy storms have been reported in the area. multiple storms. about 45 minutes into the flight, indonesian officials say the pilot requested permission to change altitude to go higher because of the weather to try to

avoid it. we're joined by the cnn aviation analyst and former managing director of federal aviation administration safety board. the search has been halted except for some of these ships that were already in the area they have stopped, they have those large bright lights. might be able to see something while they are there. but is it your concern, are you worried that we might be losing some valuable time in locating this plane and potentially those passengers on board? >> well, every hour does count. but it's foolishness to have any kind of air assets up after dark. i think this will give the searchers also some time as richard quest pointed out to really look at the radar tracks and to download any automatic information that the plane might have been transmitting to get a better fix on where the plane was last reported to be so that

the search can in concentrated. unlike malaysia flight 370, this is a heavily trafficked route both on sea and on the air. i'm pretty confident we'll start to see something once the light of day comes tomorrow. >> i would like to pull that grid, actually. because you talked about spending some time with the radar and the technology determined where this plane was but also a visual search. which do you think in this case, compared to mh-370 which came down to inmarsat and data, do you think that this will be a visual search that will be probably what will lead to the wreckage if this plane indeed went down in the java sea or to the specific search area. >> we'll have better data. we simply didn't have any data on flight 370.

once the transponder was turned off the plane went dark and it was very difficult to track and a lot of it was superposition. in this case there's no indication so far that there was any issues such as those, so i think -- i think we'll be driven by the data. it will point us in a direction. but still, the ocean is awfully big. i've searched for things there. it will take a little time. but i think we should have the data to narrow this search down and get some results within the next day or so. >> peter, we know the pilot actually asked to change course to travel due west and then throws increase the altitude because of the bad weather but there wasn't a distress signal from the plane. what does that tell you >> pilots are trained to navigate and to aviate. they want to avoid any kind of stress to their passengers. if they see bad weather in front

of them they want toby pass it. it is a little mysterious that there was no may day or no as richard pointed out no pan pan which is a call of something less than may day. but pilots are loathe to report may days or emergencies. they just don't like to do it. and they might have had their hands filled with some sort of aviation issue that they just didn't have time to communicate. >> all right. our aviation analyst. peter stick around, we obviously have more questions as we try to figure out what happened here. let's go to cnn's rosa flores. she's monitoring the response to this missing flight on social media. in many cases this is how we're hearing from the officials. we're hearing from officials in malaysia, we're hearing from the ceo of airasia online. what are we hearing? >> you know, victor, this has turned into a global conversation with people from

every corner of the world sending their thoughts and prayers to the family members of those 162. now with certain hash tags trending there's qz8501 and hash tag airasia also trending. this also an avenue for those officials to communicate with the families and with the friends of those passengers and crew. let me share one with you. this is from airasia tony fernandez. he says i as your group ceo will be there through these hard times. we will go through this terrible ordeal together and i will try to see as many of you. now also chilling because if you look closely at your screen you'll also see airasia logo is gray so it's gone from red to gray. a chilling move, of course, because all of these people are missing right now. this airliner is missing. and so that's just another touch of what this airline is doing.

now, we all remember mh-370 covering it extensively. malaysia airlines having their own tragedy and mystery. they are also going to twitter to send a message. take a look at this. malaysia airlines tweeting quote, our thoughts and prayers are with all family and friends on those on board qz8501. malaysia's transport minister tweeting, we will support our counterparts as they take lead in this crisis under icao protocol. the icao sending thoughts and prayers through social media. so, it's really become this global conversation with a lot of people remembering mh-370 and a lot of people questioning why again. >> rosa, one of the things they are doing different than the malaysian flight they do seem to be communicating quite a bit. this is a big difference than what we saw before. we saw it at the airport, that

they have isolated these family members, that they were at least trying to give them whatever information they have. does this look like a lesson learned, if you will, from the experience with the malaysian flight that we see so much discussion on social media. we're seeing these pictures now of people, they have been on their cell phones, they have been taking notes, they have been looking at the manifest. it's a very, very difficult time for them and i imagine too that they have turned to social media as well. >> yes. you're absolutely right. it has turned into this conversation with officials sending their message, their thoughts to the passengers. i would like to mention during mh-370 that was one of the big frustrations, the communication gap. and right now we are seeing a lot of traffic from different officials, from indonesia, from malaysia that are taking to twitter. they are taking to facebook as well and updating people as to

what they are actually doing within the power that they can and a lot of the times this early on it simply is thoughts and prayers. >> all right. rosa flores watching the social media angle for us. we have learned that there was one person from the uk who was on board and we're now getting confirmation from the united kingdom foreign and commonwealth office they release this statement. they are aware of the incident with areas of flight qz8501. our thoughts are with the family and passengers as they await for news. they have been informed and informed the family of that one person who was on board. breaking news coverage will continue in just a moment. stiffness, and joint damage of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist decide on a biologic, ask if xeljanz is right for you. xeljanz (tofacitinib) is a small pill, not an injection or infusion, for adults with moderate to severe ra

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we begin with breaking news, a nighttime search at sea now suspended more than 13 hours after a passenger jet with 162 people on board went missing in southeast asia. officials say that now large ships with powerful lights will continue to try to comb those waters off of indonesia for airasia 8501. but more intensive efforts have now stopped until daybreak. this airbus a32,200 left last night bound for singapore. indonesian officials say 45 minutes later