JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – An AirAsia flight with 162 people aboard disappeared Saturday on the way from Indonesia to Singapore. It’s a third air incident this year involving Malaysia, where budget carrier AirAsia in based. Here’s a look at the two other disasters and the latest missing flight.
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MH370
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on March 8 triggered one of modern aviation’s most perplexing mysteries. Flight 370 with 239 people aboard from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished without trace, sending searchers across vast areas of the Indian Ocean. An initial multi-national operation to locate the wreckage far off Australia’s west coast turned up empty-handed, without a single piece of debris found.
After a four-month hiatus, the hunt resumed Oct. 4 with new, more sophisticated equipment including sonar, video cameras and jet fuel sensors aboard three ships that will spend up to a year in a desolate stretch of the sea, about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of Australia.