PRIME TIME NEWS 22:00 Search launched for missing AirAsia flight

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ARIRANG NEWS 22:00
Thank you for joining us at this hour.
I′m Daniel Choy, here to provide you with the latest.
Title: Search launched for missing AirAsia flight
More than 12 hours have passed since the AirAsia passenger plane carrying 162 people has gone missing.
The flight was bound for Singapore from Indonesia.
We have our Kim Min-ji on the line to give us the latest.
Search operations have been halted for the night,... and we still do not know the fate of the plane.
MINJI: Daniel,
Unfortunately for the relatives of those on board the plane,... search operations have been called off until first light Monday morning.
Three planes searched the area where the plane is believed to have gone down for a couple of hours before rescue efforts were suspended for the night.
However, some boats are reportedly still looking in the area.
Now on to what happened earlier in the day,... the AirAsia QZ 8501, lost contact with Jakarta′s air traffic control,.. after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya early Sunday.
There′s conflicting information about when EXACTLY the plane lost contact.
AirAsia says contact was lost around 7.25 am local time,... but Indonesian aviation authorities say it happened about an hour earlier than that.
Indonesian authorities say the pilots had asked to change route to avoid bad weather just before the plane lost contact.
The aircraft was flying at about 32-thousand feet and had asked to fly at 38-thousand feet to avoid clouds and stormy weather.
The flight was believed to have been flying over the Java Sea when communication was lost.
We must stress that the pilots on board this flight are known to have experience, and no distress calls were sent prior to contact being lost.
As I said, officials have said that it′s now too dark and search and rescue operations will have to wait until Monday morning.
AirAsia, a low budget carrier based in Malaysia, has also set up a crisis center for worried relatives to call.
"The centre will be open full time until we find out all the facts. I hope you all here can be patient as we have got an accident or some other situation and we don′t need to assume how things will develop. The important thing now is maximum effort to search for the plane."
It seems likely that this plane has crashed,.. what are officials saying?
MINJI: Well...
Indonesia′s National Search and Rescue Agency says it believes the plane has probably crashed in waters about 145-kilometers from Belitung Island,... roughly half way between Surabaya and Singapore.
There is speculation that the plane circled over the sea in this region to avoid a storm before it experienced severe turbulence and crashed into the ocean.
And there were scores of people on board this flight too.. including some Korean nationals…
MINJI: Yes, that’s right. There were 162 people were on board the plane.
Seven crew and 155 passengers,... which includes 16 children and an infant.
As for their nationalities, the