SINGAPORE, Dec. 29 -- The boyfriend of Florentina Maria Widodo, a passenger on the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501, waited anxiously outside the relatives holding area at Singapore's Changi Airport on Monday afternoon.
Obviously in shock, Andy Paul Chen gave short answers to questions from reporters.
"I'm going there now to meet her family members," he told reporters in Chinese.
Several minutes later, a lady who appears to be his relative called for him to leave for a flight to Surabaya, Indonesia, where the search and rescue operations are underway.
Widodo, 26, was reportedly working in Singapore as a biology teacher at a local school after graduating from the National University of Singapore. She reportedly graduated from the National Institute of Education last year.
The AirAsia flight vanished from on the route between Surabaya and Singapore on Sunday morning. Reporters and families soon started showing up at the families holding area at Changi Airport, the destination of the missing flight.
Fewer relatives turned up at the airport on Monday. Most of the 162 passengers and crew on the missing flight were Indonesian nationals. Separately, the representative of a maid agency showed up at the airport on Monday to confirm information about a maid who was on the flight.
Changi Airport Group said that 47 relatives of 57 affected passengers registered for help at the airport on Sunday, and 16 of them left for Surabaya as of Sunday night.
The passengers included some families. One of the relatives who did not give her name said that she had four relatives onboard the flight, including a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old. Another said that her fiance and his family members were on the missing flight.
The only Singaporean national on the plane was Zoe Choi, who was traveling with his father Choi Chi Man, a Briton who was based in Indonesia as a senior management member at an energy firm. He is a Hong Kong resident who holds a British passport. Zoe's mother and brother reportedly traveled back to Singapore from Surabaya earlier.
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