(Bloomberg) — Search crews scouring the Java Sea for a missingAirAsia Bhd. passenger jet failed to find any trace for a secondday as authorities suspect the plane carrying 162 people crashedinto the waters off Indonesia.

Twelve vessels were joined by dozens of inflatable boats and sixwarships as well as military aircraft from Indonesia, Malaysia,Singapore and Australia to scour an area stretching to more than11,000 square nautical miles. Aerial searches are usually suspendedat night while ships will continue their hunt.

The Indonesia team suspects the plane is under water, search andrescue agency chief F.H. Bambang Sulistyo said in Jakarta today,with no signal detected from the emergency local transmitter.Contact with Flight QZ8501 was lost yesterday while the plane wason a routine commercial flight to Singapore from Surabaya,Indonesia, a journey that normally takes two hours.

“Based on the coordinates given to us, our evaluation says thelikely position where the plane crashed is in the sea,” Sulistyosaid. “The preliminary assumption is that the plane is at thebottom of the sea.”

The hunt for the Airbus Group NV A320 single-aisle jet isfocused on Kumai Bay. Poor visibility could hamper the effort,Indonesia's Vice President Jusuf Kalla said. The waters in the areaare generally shallow, with depths of no more than 60 meters (197feet) and warm temperatures that make diving easier.

Flight 370

The first planes that reached the region where the AirAsia planewas last reported didn't find any signs of the missing aircraft,Sutono, a communication director at the Indonesian search andrescue agency, said today. Searchers focused on an oil spill seen100 nautical miles off Belitung island, Hadi Tjahjono, spokesmanfor Indonesia's Airforce told reporters.

Objects spotted by one of the search planes later turned out tobe unrelated to the aircraft, the Airforce said. The plane wasn'tequipped with a satelite-based tracking system that is more routineon long-distance aircraft, according to Inmarsat Plc in London.

Shares of AirAsia dropped 8.5% in Kuala Lumpur trading, theirbiggest slide since 2011. While AirAsia is based in Sepang,Malaysia, it operates with subsidiaries and affiliates in differentcountries. The missing plane belonged to its Indonesianoperations.

“We're devastated, but we don't know what's happened yet,” ChiefExecutive Officer Tony Fernandes said at a press conference inSurabaya yesterday.

'Golden Hour'

The AirAsia pilots didn't send a distress signal, drawingcomparisons with Malaysian Airline System Bhd.'s Flight 370 thatdisappeared on March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Nowreckage from that flight has been found in what's become thelongest search for a passenger jet in modern aviation.

AirAsia QZ8501 was at 32,000 feet when the pilots requested tofly higher to avoid clouds, Indonesia's acting Air TransportDirector Djoko Murjatmodjo said in Jakarta. Air traffic controllersdidn't respond to the request before the plane disappeared offradar, National Transportation Safety Committee head TatangKurniadi said at a press conference.

Indonesia may complete the transcript of the conversationbetween the air traffic control and AirAsia pilot by tomorrow.

There were storms along AirAsia's flight path, Accuweather.comsaid on its website, citing its meteorologist Dave Samuhel. Stormsare very active this time of year, Samuhel was cited as saying,with December and January the wettest period of the year inIndonesia.

Last Signal

The last signal from the plane was between the city of Pontianakon Borneo and the town of Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island. Thesearch was initially concentrated around Belitung, TransportMinister Ignasius Jonan said earlier. Sulistyo said the search areahad been widened to include the Karimata strait and land areas inwestern West Kalimantan.

Robert Mann, head of aviation consultant R.W. Mann & Co. inPort Washington, New York, said searchers missed crucial daylighthours because authorities in Indonesia took an hour and 38 minutesto classify the plane as missing.

“It's the golden hour in an accident scene; you only have somany daylight hours,” he said in a phone interview.

AirAsia had no fatal crashes in its history of more than adecade of operations. The A320 has built a reputation as a sturdyworkhorse, with more than 6,000 A320 family aircraft in service todate with over 300 operators.

The plane that disappeared was delivered to AirAsia from theproduction line in October 2008. Powered by CFM 56-5B engines builtby a joint venture of General Electric Co. and France's Safran SA,the aircraft had accumulated approximately 23,000 flight hours insome 13,600 flights, Airbus said on its website.

The A320 and the related A318, A319 and A321 have among thelowest accident rates of modern commercial aircraft, with a fatalcrash in about 1 in every 7 million departures, according to astudy published in August by Boeing Co. The last fatal accidentinvolving an Airbus single-aisle plane was in 2010, when an A321operated by Pakistani carrier Airblue crashed into rugged terrainin heavy rain, killing all 152 people on board.

–With assistance from Andrew Janes and Rieka Rahadiana inJakarta, Kyunghee Park in Singapore, Andrea Rothman in Toulouse andNiluksi Koswanage and Liau Y-Sing in Kuala Lumpur.

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