Faulty part a major factor in Indonesian plane crash
Print Edition
Chronic problems with a faulty rudder system and the way pilots tried to respond were major factors in the crash of an Indonesian AirAsia jet last year that killed all 162 people on board, investigators said yesterday.
The Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.
In their first public report, Indonesian investigators did not pinpoint a single underlying reason why flight QZ8501 disappeared from the radar, but set out a sequence spotlighting the faulty component, maintenance lapses and the actions of the crew.
“There was a chain of events, starting with a broken part, how it was handled and then after it was handled what the consequences were and how the pilot handled it. It’s difficult for me to say what the main cause was,” said National Transportation Safety Committee investigator Nurcahyo Utomo. Bad weather did not play a role, he added.
The crash was part of a string of aviation disasters in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, where rapid growth in air travel has led to overcrowded airports and stirred safety concerns.
The committee said a system controlling rudder movement on the plane had cracked soldering that had malfunctioned repeatedly, including four times during the flight and 23 times over the previous year.
Officials told reporters there were indications from the black box data recorder that crew had tried to shut off power to the computer that controls the rudder system by resetting a circuit breaker, something not usually done during flight.
They cautioned there was no proof of this but said they had recommended to Indonesia AirAsia and Airbus that they take steps to prevent pilots from “improvising” when faced with problems.
“The thing we recommend is to please provide some procedure to prevent the pilots from improvising. Today maybe they improvise by pulling the circuit breaker, tomorrow they may do something else,” said Utomo.
Investigators confirmed that to reach the circuit breaker, the captain would have had to leave his seat.
The temporary loss of power to the computer would have canceled the autopilot and removed automated protections against an in-flight upset.
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