REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Indonesia halted the search for a missing AirAsia plane as darkness fell on Sunday and will resume the operation in the morning, the national search and rescue agency said.

The Search and Rescue Agency's operation chief, Maj. Gen. Tatang Zaenudin, said the search operation would resume at 6 am Western Indonesian Time (WIB) on Monday. He said 200 rescuers had been deployed to the east side of Belitung island.

Indonesia's Minister of Transportation Ignasius Jonan told reporters in Surabaya that search and rescue efforts now involved the Indonesian army, the national Search and Rescue Agency as well as Singapore and Malaysia. 

Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto said three aircraft, including a surveillance plane, had been dispatched to the area. The Singapore air force and the navy also were searching with two C-130 planes.

The plane carrying 162 people went missing after pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. Among the passengers were three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. The rest were Indonesians.

The plane had an Indonesian captain and a French co-pilot. The airlines said the captain had a total of 6,100 flying hours, a substantial number, and the first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours

Airbus said in a statement that the missing aircraft was delivered to AirAsia in October 2008, which would make it six years old. It said the plane had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours in some 13,600 flights. AirAsia said the aircraft had last undergone scheduled maintenance on Nov. 16.

AirAsia, which has dominated cheap travel in the region for years, flies short routes of just a few hours, connecting large cities of Southeast Asia. However, recently it has tried to expand into long-distance flying through its sister airline AirAsia X.

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