Ice may have caused AirAsia plane to crash
Print Edition
WEATHER was the “triggering factor” in the crash of AirAsia flight QZ8501 with icing likely causing engine damage, Indonesian officials said yesterday.
The Airbus A320-200 crashed into the Java Sea on December 28 carrying 162 people from Indonesia’s second city Surabaya to Singapore.
Searchers are hunting for the “black box” flight data recorders to determine the cause of the crash.
An initial report of Indonesia’s meteorological agency BMKG suggested the weather at the time the plane went down sparked the disaster after it appeared to fly into storm clouds.
“Based on the available data received on the location of the aircraft’s last contact, the weather was the triggering factor behind the accident,” said the report, which referred to infra-red satellite pictures showing peak cloud temperatures of minus 80 to minus 85 degrees Celsius at the time.
“The most probable weather phenomenon was icing which can cause engine damage due to a cooling process. This is just one of the possibilities that occurred based on the analysis of existing meteorological data,” the report said.
It remained unclear why other planes on similar routes were unaffected by the weather, and other analysts said there was not yet enough information to explain the disaster.
“It’s irrelevant to make an assumption on the cause of the crash as we haven’t found the black boxes yet,” former air force commander Chappy Hakim said.
Five major parts of the Airbus A320-200 have been found off the island of Borneo.
During a momentary respite from bad weather, a team of divers went down to the biggest part of the wreckage yesterday morning and recovered one body, while another three were found floating in the sea, bringing the total number recovered to 34.
The divers “managed to go down but the visibility at the sea bottom was zero, it was dark and the seabed was muddy, with currents of three to five knots,” search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo said.
He said the fifth major part of the plane, located early yesterday, measured about 10 meters by one meter.
The search, focused on a site southwest of the Borneo town of Pangkalan Bun, has been extended east because parts of the plane may have been swept by currents, Soelistyo said.
The operation has prioritized finding the bodies of those on board the flight, of whom 155 were Indonesian, with three South Koreans, one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one Briton and a Frenchman — co-pilot Remi Plesel.
Indonesian warship commander Yayan Sofyan said three of the bodies so far recovered had been found still strapped into their seats, detached from the main plane body.
The daughter of the plane’s pilot, Captain Iriyanto, made a televised plea to the public not to blame her father.
“He is just a victim and has not been found yet. My family is now mourning,” said Angela Ranastianis. “As a daughter, I cannot accept it. No pilot will harm his passengers.”
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