Suggest that all evidence suggests that the plane might be at the bottom of the sea. The other major story we continue to follow hundreds of passengers desperately waiting on that ferry right there in freezing temperatures. The ferry has been on fire for more than 24 hours. And many people are still waiting to be plucked off to safety. And hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. Youre watching cnns live coverage. Im natalie allen. And im john vause. And for a second day a broad area in the java sea is the site for a search for the missing flight 8501. Its a total of almost 155,000 square miles. Indonesia has put out seven vessels to search for the plane. Australia and singapore and malaysia sending ships. The flight went missing sunday with 162 people on board. It was just a twohour nightflight. Despite the ongoing efforts, a top official had a grim message about what may be the airliners fate. Here it is. Translator if the target is on land it is easier than if its an underwater location. Because our evaluation of the koord nalts suggest it is under water, our presumption now is that the aircraft is under the sea. Lets go to cnns paula hancocks. She has arrived in indonesia where many search efforts are under way. What can you tell us about the it search there and whether they are searching in the water and on any possible land. There are some people that believe that this plane could have landed somehow or gone down on one of the many many islands there in that region paula. Reporter i spoke to the first marshal in charge of the search and rescue operation here on the islands, and this has really become a staging area for many of these helicopters coming in. And he basically said i asked him if there could be survivors from this plane incident. And he said at this point, he believes if it landed in the water it is very unlikely that anyone survived. But he said it is still a possibility that the plane may have crashed on land. It may have crashed on an island to the east of here. And so certainly, he said they are not ruling anything out at this point. They still have a very wide search area 240 or 240 nautical miles. Its being cordoned off, at least five different sections by air to basically check. Theyre not overlapping, and to make sure they dont miss any ariasirrea areas. They havent narrowed down the search or hone in on one particular area that they believe at this point that the search still seems very random. So obviously, that will be disappointing for the relatives of those passengers and crew who would like the plane to be found as soon as possible. Now we do have an update as well on just how big this search operation is. It has increased over the day. We foe thatknow that theres more than a dozen ships involved more than a halfdozen helicopters, and thats just the indonesian side. Malaysia singapore and australia getting involved. South korea is thinking about sending assets too. The one thing according to this official i spoke to is bad weather is expected to roll in over the next few days. He is expecting rain which of course is not good for visibility. And the cloud cover is going to hamper search and rescue operations. Its so eerily similar to mh 370. I remember you talking about the very same thing when you were in perth australia, where they were leading that search for the airplane which of course has never been found. And here we are gone. I know its early on and theyre just gearing up as more join in the search. Are they talking about how theyre separating out the search on any land versus the search at sea . Reporter methey are, yes. Theres basically three searches the search on air, sea, and land. They say they have five different sections that theyre working with from the air. There are 12 different sections theyre working with from the sea and three sections on land. So theyre doing it very systematically which you really have to when theres a significant amount of area that youre trying to cover. They want to make sure theres no overlap. Of course there are an awful lot of helicopters and planes in the air and have been earlier today. In fact there was a military plane that landed here at the airport and had to wait because there was too much in the air. Its a busy area at the best of times. Obviously a busy shipping channel. And of course with these extra assets in the area, it is making it more difficult to coordinate. All right. Paula hancocks there for us and we will continue to keep tabs on you where you are there where they are leading and coordinating the search efforts. There are 162 people on board that missing flight. And we are slowly learning more about them and also about the people who are waiting to hear any news about their fate. Cnns nick valencia has the details. We want to try to give you meaning to these numbers. 162 souls on board this airasia flight that disappeared. 162 people all with their own unique individual stories. And we know that they were from a variety of backgrounds. The majority of those on this flight 155 passengers seven crew, were from indonesia, with a handful from south korea, others from malaysia singapore and at least one from europe one u. K. National and french national. French authorities are working hand in hand in collaborating with the indonesian government to try to find the whereabouts of this missing plane. We also know another name that has been confirmed is that of the British National whos an indonesian based Energy Executive named cho chi man. He was traveling with his 2yearold daughter a Singaporean National one of the youngest on this flight. A fiance was on the flight and she spoke to local media and talked about how she found out it had disappeared. . I listened to the local radio, and they said his plane was missing. Thats all, and, yeah. It was supposed to be their last vacation before us got married, was to be his last vacation with his family. At daybreak the search did resume locally. Right now, though for all those who had loved ones on this plane, it is for all intents and purposes wait and see. Nick valencia cnn, atlanta. There are a lot of questions about what may or may not have happened to this plane, what went wrong. And a lot of people are looking at the role the weather may have played because there were lots of storms in the area at the time it went missing. And youve been describing this area as seeing a lot of thunderstorms this time of year during the monsoon, but this particular time was perhaps the perfect storm. Yeah. It lined up with the flight path. But you take a look at this region, around the equator, and of course air france 447 back in 2009 in a similar sort of region as far as being close to the equator, an intertropical convergence zone. Its a fancy term for where the winds join together. You take an average thunderstorm which typically goes to 30,000 feet. This particular one which was within 8 nautical miles of the flight path the anvil, it literally flattens this out and its a messy scenario. This aircraft had a max ceiling of 40,000 feet and would not be capable of getting up and above this storm. Theson air scenarios you have to play with are to go around the system. And headwinds are a concern as well. Heres the storm were talking about. Heres the path. Notice a little bit of clearing. What we notice in close proximity to a thunderstorm usually a mature thunderstorm winds will begin to collapse and fan out. So all of that energy is transferred down to the surface. Of course if youre flying in this vicinity youre going to feel the wrath of the storm system. And thats precisely what we have in this highly organized storm. In a matter of one and a half to two hours it rains itself out. It shows you the tremendous amount of energy removed from this. And certainly, by itself i dont believe it could bring a plane down but if this causes several other things to play out while youre flying and we know going back to air france 447, the pitot tubes, they measure the speed of the aircraft. They were caught they had some ice form on them. If thisson scenario played out it could be a factor. Its uncanny we have another mystery like this in the same year. Thanks pedram. Now we turn to another major story we are following, but we are happy to say in this one there are people being res khaicued. The ferry has been burning for more than 24 hours now. This is the first images of passengers of the 49 passengers that were picked up by a passing ship and taken to italy. Apparently they tried to dock at another port but the weather was so bad they had to change those plans and dock here. Those people have survived the past 24 hours on board that burning ferry in freezing and atrocious conditions. Look how he that is one person trying to make it down these stairs. Those people were freezing out there in terrible conditions for such a long time. There are still a lot of people on that ferry. These that youre seeing here theyre the lucky ones. They were rescued early, and theyre finally back on land there. Theres a child being brought down. There were many many children on this ferry as well. And these people have quite the story to tell about this ordeal. And as we say, many others still sitting there in the freezing temperatures on a ferry that is still burning. So theyre sitting on a hot surface, and they are dealing with conditions as we heard from journalist Barbie Nadeau whos been with us many times now, she is from rome with the latest developments on how these continuous rescues are going, barbie. Reporter thats right. The latest updated figures are 310 people have been rescued, 316 have been rescued, 162 still on board. Its really moving quickly now that theres light, and theyre able to use larger aircraft to take people off this ship. As you just mentioned, we saw the first people coming in by boat to the italian portside. Earlier yesterday, a number of people were airlifted to various hospitals. There was a pregnant woman, several children suffering from hypotherl yeah but these people that we saw getting off this merchant ship that picked up some of the people in the Early Morning yesterday are finally on dry land. And i think they are the fittest of the bunch. There are 85 people on an Italian Naval ship right now, under medical care. Those people will be brought in later on today. I think this is a scene thats just going to repeat itself throughout the day as more of these merchant ships and navy ships and rescue ships start to bring these passengers ashore. But, again, theres still 160 people that have to be taken offer that ship by helicopter. Five at a time now, sometimes six, in metal baskets. Then theyll have to decide what to do with the ferry. The fire is contained at the moment. But theyre very concerned hathat it could reignite if the ship is jostled too much. But they are expecting high seas throughout the afternoon. So they are using this window of relatively calm seas to work very quickly, get the people off and keep that ship thats still on fire in the lower regions of the ship as secure as possible so it doesnt go to an explosion, so theres no greater damage and no greater risk to those people trying to that are still on the ship obviously and those that are trying to rescue them. Were batchwatching one of those rescues right now. You can see how long it takes just to pull one person up in these conditions and these theyre able to do several at a time now, thank goodness. Theyve got an italian medical team to treat the people on board and the death toll is just at one which is miraculous. We are going to turn back to our story that we continue to watch, passenger flights from two Major Airlines disappearing this year coming up what is different and what is similar between the disappearance of malaysian flight 370 and airasia 8501. And the families who are in anguish awaiting information about their loved ones on board that missing plane. Bulldog the red tags mean save up to 40 on clearance mattresses. Get up to 48 months interestfree financing on tempurpedic. Pup i found a red tag [laughter] bulldog mattress discounters year end Clearance Sale ends soon with the missing airasia flight the airliner we continue to look at this airline, it is a popular, lowfrills airline, its logo printed in bold red and white. But after the disappearance, the Company Changed its logo online going from bright red to a more muted and somber gray. And the ceo, Tony Fernandes has been actively updating his social media pages since the plane went missing. This is one of his latest tweets. It says keeping positive and staying strong my heart bleeds for all the relatives of my crew and our passengers. Nothing is more important to us. Well it does feel like deja vu. Another plane vanishing near where the Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared just ten months ago. A lot of people making connections. And jim clancy shows the differences and similarities and what lessons have been learned. Theres some disconcerting similarities between the Malaysian Air flight and airasia. Malaysian airlines disappeared within an hour. The airasia flight disappeared less than an hour after leaving surabaya. Neither plane sent a diskress call, but in the case of the Malaysian Airliner it was a clear night. The passengers and crew of airasia 8501 were experiencing very bad weather. The search was pressed in the South China Sea for a better part of a week. The breaking news here on cnn cnn broke the news barely 48 hours after the plane had gone missing that malaysias own military radar showed it was gone from that area within an hour of takeoff. The government had hesitated. Critical information was withheld. Malaysia airlines didnt tell families flight 370 was even missing until the time it was supposed to be arriving in beijing, many hours after it vanished. Families felt deceived. Many accused malaysian authorities of a coverup. Conspiracy theories exploded on the internet even as officials were belatedly trying to set the record straight because whether couldnt be a factor for mh 370, many theories centered on terrorism, although no link to terrorism had been uncovered it was too late, and whatever information released by malaysian authorities seemed meaningless. China took the unusual step of allowing the families to take to the streets in protest. Airasia appears to have learn the lessons from the mh 370 tragedy and moved quickly to inform families. Indonesias transport ministry also responded. A passenger manifest and load list were online within hours. Critical questions remain. In the hours and days ahead, radar ever ors and search efforts may reveal answers for the families of passengers of 8501. Neither plane had the gps locater so many experts advocated after the disappearance of 370. That may be the lesson we havent learned. Jim clancy cnn. When we come back much more on the disappearance of airasia 8501. Well go to one analyst about what this may mean for the entire aviation industry. cough, cough mike . Janet . Cough if you can hear me. Dont even think about it. I took mucinex dm for my phlegmy cough. Yeah. But what about mike . He has that dry, scratchy thing going on. Guess what . cough it works on his cough too. What . Stop, dont pull me spoiler alert she doesnt make it only mucinex dm packs 2 medicines in one pill to relieve wet and dry coughs for 12 hours. Start the relief. Ditch the misery. Lets end this. [ male announcer ] you wouldnt leave your car unprotected. But a lot of us leave our identities unprotected. 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There just isnt time. Sometimes its because pilots dont realize just how much trouble theyre really in and times its because something goes wrong mechanically and theyre fighting to save the plane. But i can tell you over the years in all the voice recordings i have heard, the pilots are fighting to the end. So im going to assume here until i hear otherwise that thats what they were doing here they were fighting to save the plane and their passengers and were too busy to call air control. That was mary schiavo on why there was no mayday call before it vanished. The plane was traveling from surabaya to singapore, a twohour flight when it disappeared. Officials say before the airline lost contact, the pilot requested to fly at a higher altitude because of thunderstorms in the area. Now one Indonesian Authority says the conjecture is that the plan is at the bottom of the sea. But the search is till in the early stages and that opinion is yet to be confirmed. Lets bring in an aviation expert from the u. K. Joining us by skype from cambridge. Three air disasters, what will be the fallout . I think the fallouts already happened because after the first two incidents, certain things were put in place. And unfortunately, burrocracy takes a long time. Many of these mode