• Divers Find Black Boxes from AirAsia Flight 8501

    Investigators in charge of finding out what caused the demise of AirAsia Flight 8501 a little more than two weeks ago have just retrieved a major piece to the puzzle. On Monday, Jan. 12, divers recovered the flight data recorder from beneath a wing at the bottom of the Java Sea. They also have located the cockpit voice recorder about 105 feet below the water, buried beneath wreckage. Divers are reportedly working to free that second black box from beneath heavy wreckage. Flight 8501 left Surabaya for Singapore two Sundays ago only to find itself caught in horrible weather. The pilot had asked for permission to climb to a higher altitude and, by the time that permission was granted a few minutes later, all contact had already been lost with the craft. Indonesian officials have speculated that icing may have built up, causing the engine to stall out and leading to the plane plummeting into the sea. Everything at this point is sheer speculation, but two things are certain, though. There were six other planes flying in exactly the same storm as Flight 8501 and they made it safely to their destinations, so this flight should not have even been in the air. AirAsia is permitted to run the Surabaya-to-Singapore route four days a week, and Sunday is not one of those days, so if they had been following their legal guidelines this plane would never have been in the air, let alone lost. Investigators are hopeful that they will get answers about what happened from these boxes.

  • Tail Has Been Found for Missing AirAsia Plane

    Finally, conditions for the search and recovery of lost AirAsia Flight 8501 have improved enough for divers to spot the tail of the plane. It has been located about 20 miles from the craft's last known location and resting at the bottom of the Java Sea. This is particularly promising news because if it is the right side of the tail, then the black box will likely be recovered with it. That recovery is crucial in helping investigators understand exactly what happened in the final moments of the doomed flight. "We've found the tail that has been our main target," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the search and rescue agency, said at a news conference in Jakarta. The tail was identified by divers after it was spotted by an underwater machine using a sonar scan, Soelistyo said. He displayed underwater photographs showing partial lettering on the sunken object compared with a picture of an intact Airbus A320-200 in AirAsia livery. "I can confirm that what we found was the tail part from the pictures," he said, adding that the team "now is still desperately trying to locate the black box," according to a report by Reuters. So far, monsoon-like rain and minimal visibility has made recovering the bodies of the 162 passengers on board difficult, and divers have been frustrated to know that they are so close yet have not been able to fully do their job.

  • Investigators Believe AirAsia Flight 8501 'At the Bottom of the Sea'

    For a little while, it seemed like debris from AirAsia's Flight 8501 might have been spotted floating in the Java Sea, but that possibility has now been dismissed. The work horse flight disappeared from radar more than 36 hours ago after asking to alter its course due to bad weather. A few minutes later the Airbus 320-200 disappeared from radar and has not been seen or heard from since. Unfortunately, as time goes on, officials have seen less reason to believe that the outcome of this situation will be anything less than grim. Indonesia's search and rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo has admitted that, "Based on the coordinates that we know, the evaluation would be that any estimated crash position is in the sea, and that the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea." That is obviously not the reality the families of the 162 people on board Flight 8501 want to believe. Their loved ones departed Surabaya, Indonesia, Sunday morning, Dec. 28, headed for Singapore, a trip that usually takes about two hours. The plane instead vanished amid thick storm clouds and thunderstorms that made travel conditions difficult.

  • Search for Missing AirAsia Flight 8501 Suspended Due to Bad Weather

    2014 has proven to be an especially tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia, and in the last 24 hours it has been compounded by the loss of another plane. AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished over the Indonesian Sea Sunday, Dec. 28, and as of now there is no trace of the craft. The flight, carrying 162 people, departed Surabaya for Singapore, but not long into the trip the pilot asked to change his course. At 6:13 a.m., Flight 8501 was reportedly in the middle of dense fog and thunderstorm and the pilot asked to gain speed and altitude in an attempt to fly over the clouds. The flight was last seen on the radar at 6:16 a.m., and after several hours of searching efforts to find the missing plane have been halted until daylight. The Airbus A320 took off from Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest airport, with an Indonesian captain and a French co-pilot, five cabin crew members and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant. According to an official statement by AirAsia, most of the passengers were Indonesians. There were also three South Koreans, a Malaysian, a British national and his 2-year-old Singaporean daughter. The captain reportedly has more than 20,000 flying hours and the first officer has 2,275 flying hours. At Surabaya airport, families were gathered together in a small room, attempting to comfort each other as they await word on the fate of the flight. AirAsia is 49 percent owned by Malaysia, which makes this the third ill-fated flight of this calendar year for that country.

  • Randy Spelling Lives Normal Life, Isn't Close to Sister Tori

    While Tori Spelling has managed to keep herself working in the entertainment industry, one way or another, her younger brother has taken a completely different path in his adult life. Randy Spelling did an interview recently for Oprah: Where Are They Now?, and it seems he has really embraced a more normal lifestyle. While Randy was raised in a 123-room mansion known as Spelling Manor, his scaled-back, normal life in Portland, Oregon, seems to suit him just fine these days. Randy explained to Oprah: "My life is really different from how I grew up. It's definitely more quiet and more simple. I am a husband, I'm a father of two amazing girls. We do a lot of cooking. I mean, 90 percent of the food that we eat is all home-cooked. Would it have been nice to have been left a whole lot of money? Yes, things happen the way they need to, and my life right now might look very different if I had $10 million sitting in the bank. So, I had to get my wings burned a little bit and fall to learn how to just live rather normally." He also works as a popular life coach, which is more than a little ironic considering his sister's need for drama and chaos. Randy appears to be the more fully evolved of the two, and while he explains that he and Tori are not as close as he would like them to be, he manages not to say an even slightly negative thing about her. Randy simply points out that his sister is juggling four kids, a husband and a career in the spotlight and how it is a lot for her to handle.

  • Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Fate Will Likely Remain a Mystery

    In the eight months since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared from the sky during an overnight flight, there have been more questions than answers. Almost immediately, Malaysia Airlines Management reported that the plane had been hijacked but then quickly changed their minds, insisting they were not sure what had become of the missing flight. There has been false information put out by MAS, and mixed signals and fallacies have completely taken over this case, leaving family members confused and devastated. Then there is the fact that while extensive searches have been launched, especially by the Australian ATSB, the search area has changed on a few different occasions. According to insiders, MAS is preparing to declare the plane officially lost by the end of the year, but some believe the country simply does not want any trace of it found, according to the Examiner.

  • Police Search for Carlesha Freeland-Gaither Abduction in Philadelphia Sunday Night Captured on Film

    Perhaps the most disturbing thing that many of us will see this week is the video of 22-year-old Carlesha Freeland-Gaither being abducted while walking on West Coulter Street a few blocks from her Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, home. At about 9:40 p.m. Sunday night, Nov. 2, nearby surveillance video caught Freeland-Gaither being snatched from the sidewalk and then dragged down the block kicking and screaming until she was thrown into the backseat of a dark, four-door car. Her abduction was captured on film, and police are searching for her. According to the (New York) "Daily News," a nearby witness heard Freeland-Gaither screaming for help and she was able to kick out the rear driver's and passenger side windows before the car sped off. Authorities believe the suspect was likely driving a dark gray Ford Taurus with Pennsylvania plates. The vehicle was missing inspection stickers and there was an unknown item on the bottom center of the front windshield.
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