The Airbus A320-200 was carrying seven crew and 155 passengers, including 17 children. Almost all of them were Indonesians, with the exception of a South Korean family of three, the French co-pilot, one Briton, one Singaporean and one Malaysian.
Capt Iriyanto, an Indonesian national, has been described as an experienced airman, who was a fighter pilot before going into commercial aviation.
AirAsia Indonesia said he had logged 20,537 hours of flight time, 6,053 of which were with AirAsia.
Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) said that after leaving the Indonesian Air Force, Capt Iriyanto became a commercial pilot with Merpati Airways. He then then joined Adam Air - which had a plane crash on the island of Sulawesi in 2007 and went bankrupt in 2008 - before moving to AirAsia.
His father told the BBC on Monday that he was heartbroken at the possibility that his son might not come back alive.
He had seen him just the previous week at the funeral of another of his sons who had died of complications related to diabetes.
The co-pilot: First Officer Remi Emmanuel Plesel
The co-pilot was a 46-year-old French national who was born in the Caribbean territory of Martinique and lived in Paris. He had 2,275 hours of flight experience.
Speaking from Martinique, Plesel's mother Rolande told the French newspaper Le Parisien: "He wanted to be a pilot ever since he was a child."
She said he was "very attached to his mother" and telephoned her every time he took a flight. On Saturday, they had a video chat because he wanted to see their Christmas decorations, she added.
Ms Plesel told French media there that his girlfriend called on Sunday to tell her about the missing flight.
Remi Plesel studied in Paris and worked as an engineer for the Total oil company before leaving to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot, Martinique 1ere reported.
He was the vice-president of an association of professional pilots from the Caribbean and had worked as a pilot in Indonesia for three years, Le Parisien said.
Mr Choi was on flight QZ8501 with his two-year-old daughter, Zoe, a Singaporean citizen. It is believed that his wife and son had taken an earlier flight to Singapore because the family had been unable to get four seats together.
Originally from Hull, the 48-year-old studied engineering at the University of Essex.
Mr Choi lived in Singapore but worked in Indonesia as a managing director of thermal services for electronics manufacturing firm Alstom Power.
His parents, who are from Hong Kong, still live in Hull. Mr Choi is also understood to have a brother and sister in the UK.
In his LinkedIn profile, former colleagues praised Mr Choi for his experience in multicultural work environments, saying he communicated well with people from different cultures.
Park Seong-beom and Lee Kyung-hwa
This South Korean couple were Christian missionaries who worked in Indonesia. They were travelling to Singapore with their baby daughter to renew their visas.
Mr Park and his family were from Yeosu, a fishing village 450km (280 miles) south of Seoul.
"It had been only two months since he settled in Indonesia and he was in the middle of learning the local language," Kim Jong Heon, a pastor at Yeosu First Presbyterian Church, told Bloomberg.
"He didn't mind evangelising as an ordinary Christian, because he was passionate about his work and wanted to help people in any way he could."
Mr Park also taught Korean and computer skills.
Before their arrival in Indonesia in September, the couple had lived in Cambodia for four years.
