AirAsia Changes Its Logo Out Of Respect

On Saturday, popular budget airline AirAsia lost contact with one of its flights: Flight QZ8501, which went missing over the Java Sea on its way from Indonesia to Singapore. Shortly after releasing its initial statement, AirAsia, which was named the world's best low-cost airline in 2012 and has never before lost a flight, changed the AirAsia logo from red to gray on its social media accounts in a mark of respect for the passengers aboard Flight QZ8501 and their families.

Indonesia has sent ships to investigate the area, but poor weather conditions forced the search crew to halt its operations until morning. AirAsia has been actively updating its Twitter and Facebook accounts to reflect the latest updates, including the nationality of the flight's passengers and the number of flight attendants and passengers of different ages aboard. On Facebook, the airline wrote:

The aircraft was an Airbus A320-200 with the registration number PK-AXC. There were two pilots, four flight attendants and one engineer on board.

The captain in command had a total of 6,100 flying hours and the first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours

There were 155 passengers on board, with 138 adults, 16 children and 1 infant. Also on board were 2 pilots and 5 cabin crew.

Nationalities of passengers and crew onboard are as below:

1 Singapore

1 Malaysia

1 France

3 South Korean

156 Indonesia

Across social media, the distinctive red AirAsia logo was changed to a somber gray. Chief of AirAsia Tony Fernandes also changed his Twitter picture to the new logo.

Other social media accounts belonging to affiliates of AirAsia have followed suit.

Images: Facebook/AirAsia, Twitter/AirAsia, AirAsia