Jakarta Globe – AFP, Jan 21, 2015
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| AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed in shallow waters with 162 people on board, but so far just 53 bodies have been recovered. (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto) |
Jakarta.
Warning alarms in AirAsia Flight QZ8501 were “screaming” as the pilots
desperately tried to stabilize the plane just before it plunged into the Java
Sea last month, a crash investigator said on Wednesday.
The noise
of several alarms — including one that indicated the plane was stalling — can
be heard going off in recordings from the black box in the Airbus A320-200′s
cockpit, the investigator told AFP, requesting anonymity.
“The
warning alarms, we can say, were screaming, while in the background they [the
pilot and co-pilot] were busy trying to recover,” the investigator said, adding
the warnings were going off “for some time.”
The
investigator, from Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC),
added that the pilots’ voices were drowned out by the sound of the alarms.
The
revelation came a day after Indonesian Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan
said that the plane had climbed abnormally fast before stalling and plunging
into the sea, during a flight on Dec. 28 in stormy weather from Surabaya to
Singapore.
“In the
final minutes, the plane climbed at a speed which was beyond normal,” the
minister told reporters.
The plane
crashed in shallow waters with 162 people on board, but so far just 53 bodies
have been recovered.
Divers have
been struggling for a week against rough seas and strong currents to reach the
plane’s main body, which was spotted on the seabed and is thought to contain
the bulk of the remaining passengers and crew.
The two
black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder — were
recovered last week after a lengthy search, and investigators are expected to
complete a preliminary report next week.
As well as
the cockpit voice recorder, the NTSC is examining a wealth of information in
the flight data recorder, which monitors every major part of the plane.
They are
focusing on the possibility of human or aircraft error, after ruling out
terrorism following an analysis of the cockpit voice recorder.
Committee
head Tatang Kurniadi said that the preliminary report into the crash would be
completed on Tuesday, a month after the accident. He said the full report would
not be released publicly but the media would be told some of its contents.
There was a
huge international hunt for the crashed plane, involving ships from several
countries including the US and China.
All but
seven of those on board the flight were Indonesian. The foreign nationals were
from South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and France.
Agence France-Presse
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