The Strait Times - AFP, Jan 20, 2015
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| A rescue team member walks near part of the fuselage of crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 inside a storage facility at Kumai port in Pangkalan Bun on Jan 19, 2015. An AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board climbed at a speed that was "beyond normal" and then stalled, the Indonesian transport minister said on Tuesday. -- Photo Reuters |
JAKARTA
(AFP) - An AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162
people on board climbed faster than normal and then stalled, the Indonesian
transport minister said Tuesday.
Flight
QZ8501 went down on Dec 28 in stormy weather, during what was supposed to be a
short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Indonesia’s
meteorological agency has said bad weather may have caused the crash, and
investigators are analysing the data from the jet’s black boxes before
releasing a preliminary report.
Just
moments before the plane disappeared off the radar, the pilot had asked to
climb to avoid the storm. He was not immediately granted permission due to
heavy air traffic.
“In the
final minutes, the plane climbed at a speed which was beyond normal,” Transport
Minister Ignasius Jonan told reporters, citing radar data.
“The plane
suddenly went up at a speed above the normal limit that it was able to climb
to. Then it stalled.”
Earlier at
a parliamentary hearing, he said radar data showed the Airbus A320-200 appeared
at one point to be climbing at a rate of 1,800m (6,000ft) a minute before the
crash.
There were
several other planes in the area at the time.
“I think it
is rare even for a fighter jet to be able to climb 6,000 feet per minute,” he
said.
“For a
commercial flight, climbing around 1,000 to 2,000 (feet) is maybe already
considered extraordinary, because it is not meant to climb that fast.”
However,
defence aviation experts said the minister’s statement was incorrect, adding
that a fighter jet flying at an altitude of 10,000m is capable of climbing
10,000 feet per minute.
TERRORISM
RULED OUT
The
minister’s comments came after Indonesian investigators said they were focusing
on the possibility of human error or problems with the plane having caused the
crash, following an initial analysis of the cockpit voice recorder.
“We didn’t
hear any other person, no explosion,” investigator Nurcahyo Utomo told
reporters, explaining why terrorism had been ruled out.
Investigators
from the National Transportation Safety Committee were now looking at the
“possibility of plane damage and human factors", he said, without giving
further details.
As well as
the cockpit voice recorder, the committee is also examining a wealth of
information in the flight data recorder, which monitors every major part of the
plane.
A
preliminary report will be released on Jan 28.
There was a
huge international hunt for the crashed plane, involving ships from several
countries including the US and China.
Indonesian
search and rescue teams have so far recovered just 53 bodies from the sea.
But last
week a Singapore navy ship located the jet’s main body, with the AirAsia motto
“Now Everyone Can Fly” painted on the side.
Rescue
teams hope they will be able to find many of the passengers and crew inside.
However,
divers have not succeeded in reaching the fuselage despite several attempts due
to bad weather, high waves and strong underwater currents.
All but
seven of those on board the flight were Indonesian. The foreign nationals were
from South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and France.
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