Illness in family:

An Indonesian family of five cancelled their four-day vacation to Singapore after the grandfather in the family fell ill and did not fly on AirAsia QZ8501, Bloomberg reported.

Ms Inge Goreti Ferdiningsih, 37, an accountant, said she and her businessman husband, Chandra Susanto, paid S$645 (8 million rupiah) for return flights on the low-cost carrier for their family of five, which includes 10-year-old son Christopher Incha Prasetya, seven-year-old daughter Nadine and son Felix, five.

They had wanted to spend three days in Sentosa out of their planned four-day vacation.

They booked the trip in June with the children eager to visit a water theme park on Sentosa island.

But when Ms Ferdiningsih's father became ill, she said they decided to call the trip off the day before the flight.

Christopher was particularly upset that his holiday was cancelled and did not believe that the plane disappeared initially when he was told.

The mother said via a phone interview from Surabaya: "When we told him the plane was missing, he didn't believe us until we showed him the tickets."

Missed email

Another Surabaya family of 10 missed reading an email informing them of a change in flight timing and they ended up not taking AirAsia flight QZ8501.

Surabaya resident Ari Putro Cahyono said that he and his family consisting of nine other members had arrived at Juanda International Airport, Surabaya, at 5:30am as the flight was originally scheduled to depart at 7:20am.

But they later found out that the schedule had been changed to 5:20am.

As quoted by kompas.com, Ari said: "I did not read the email notifying the change of the departure schedule."

The operator then offered Ari the chance to board the next flight.

But he refused after being informed at the airport that air traffic control had lost contact with QZ8501 at around 6.30am.

"My family and I then decided to cancel the trip," he said.

There were a total of 23 no-shows, three of whom would have had boarded with infants, according to the flight's manifest.

The aircraft, with 155 passengers and seven crew on board, lost contact with air traffic control at around 6:17am local time and remains missing despite a search and locate operation.

Several officials have suggested that the plane's last coordinates were located close to Bangka Belitung province.

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