A man who had a lucky escape after cancelling his flight aboard the missing AirAsia jet wept as he recounted his conversation with one of the passengers shortly before the flight.
The man told CNN affiliate Channel News Asia: “This morning before I went to pray, one of them called me and jokingly said, ‘See you in the new year and goodbye forever.’ That’s all, and then the bad news came.”
He added: “I should have gone with them but I cancelled it two weeks ago as I had something to do.”
The man, whose name was not given, was visibly upset during the interview with a reporter at Juanda International Airport in East Java, Indonesia.
CNN reported that the man was a relative of one of the passengers.
Jump to the 7:08 mark of this video to see the interview:
Singapore-bound Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control roughly an hour after the single-aisle jetliner took off from Juanda International Airport in Surabaya yesterday morning.
There were 155 passengers, two pilots and five crew on board — mostly Indonesian.
There is no news on what happened to the flight and the air search to find it has been stopped overnight.
In its last contact with Jakarta’s air traffic control, the plane requested to deviate from its normal route to avoid a cloud, about an hour before it was scheduled to land.