AirAsia jet climbed at ‘abnormal’ speed then stalled
Print Edition
The AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board climbed at a faster than normal speed and then stalled, the Indonesian transport minister said yesterday.
Flight QZ8501 went down on December 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 might have caused the crash, and investigators are analyzing 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 ... then it stalled,” Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan told reporters, citing radar data.
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 1,800 meters a minute before the crash.
A commercial flight, he said “is not meant to climb that fast.”
His 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.
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 January 28.
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