Co-pilot at the controls of AirAsia crash plane
Print Edition
THE French co-pilot of an AirAsia passenger jet that crashed into the sea last month was at the controls just before the accident, Indonesia’s lead investigator said yesterday.
The Airbus A320 vanished from radar screens in bad weather on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. All 162 people on board were killed.
“The second-in-command, popularly known as the co-pilot, who usually sits to the right of the cockpit, at the time, he was flying the plane,” said National Transport Safety Committee investigator Mardjono Siswosuwarno, referring to First Officer Remi Plesel.
“The captain, sitting to the left, was the pilot monitoring.”
Data from the black box flight data recorder provided the accident probe with a “pretty clear picture” of what happened in the last moments of AirAsia flight QZ8501, Siswosuwarno said, although few details have been made public.
Indonesia has previously said the aircraft climbed abruptly from its cruising height and then stalled, or lost lift, before plunging out of control into the sea.
Using a hand-held model of an A320, officials demonstrated to reporters how the aircraft veered left and climbed steeply to more then 11,300 meters before rapidly losing altitude in the moments before the crash.
Captain Iriyanto, 53, an Indonesia air force veteran with about 20,000 flying hours logged, was believed to have taken over control of the aircraft from the less experienced Plesel when it started to ascend and then descend, officials said.
The stall warning — an automated voice that repeats the words “stall, stall” — had sounded in the cockpit. The aircraft was still in a stall when the black box recordings ended seconds before impact, Siswosuwarno said.
On Wednesday, Indonesia said the search for dozens of victims still unaccounted for could end within days if no more bodies were found.
A multinational search and recovery operation has found 70 bodies in the Java Sea and had hoped to find more after finding the fuselage. But rough weather and poor underwater visibility hampered efforts.
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