Backgrounder: Major air accidents in recent years

BEIJING - An AirAsia passenger plane with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control Sunday after departing from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore.

On board the Airbus A320-200 aircraft are 155 passengers, two pilots, four air stewards and one engineer, the Malaysia-based budget airline said in a statement. The QZ8501 flight lost communication 42 minutes after taking off at 5:35 a.m. in staff at Indonesia's Surabaya airport.

The following are a list of major aircraft crashes and accidents that took place worldwide in recent years.

On July 24, 2014, an Air Algerie flight, a MD-83 aircraft, crashed in Mali, killing 110 passengers and six Spanish crew.

On July 23, 2014, a ATR-72 plane crashed on western Taiwan's Penghu Island amid stormy weather, killing 48 people and injuring 10 others.

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, went down in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished with 239 people aboard, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

On Feb 11, 2014, 76 people were killed when a C-130 Hercules military plane belonging to the Algerian Air Force crashed in the country's eastern Oum El Bouaghi province.

On June 3, 2012, a Dana Air plane from Nigeria's capital city Abuja crashed in a residential area in the Lagos metropolis, killing the 153 people on board and 40 others living inside a two-story building hit by the aircraft.

On July 28, 2010, an Airblue Flight ED-202 crashed into the Margalla Hills in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, killing all the 152 people aboard.

On May 22, 2010, at least 158 people were killed when an Air India Express plane from Dubai overshot the runway during landing and crashed near Mangalore airport in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

On May 12, 2010, a passenger plane of Libya's Afriqiyah Airways crashed on landing at Tripoli airport, killing all of the 103 people on board except an 8-year-old Dutch boy.

On April 10, 2010, 96 people aboard Polish President Lech Kaczynski's official Tupolev Tu-154 plane were killed in a crash near Smolensk airport in western Russia. The plane was carrying Kaczynski, his wife Maria and a large number of senior Polish officials.

On July 15, 2009, an Iranian passenger plane crashed near the country's northwestern city of Gazvin, killing all 168 people on board.

On June 30, 2009, an Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean as it approached the airport on the Comoros Islands, killing 152 people on board. Only a 13-year-old French girl survived.

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, went down over the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris, killing all 228 people on board.

On May 20, 2009, an Indonesian Air Force Hercules C-130 crashed and burned in Magetan, East Java, killing at least 96 people and injuring 15 others.

On Aug 20, 2008, 154 people died and 18 others were injured when a 15-year-old plane crashed and burst into flames during takeoff in Madrid.