A computer fault and subsequent crew actions were among the factors that led to the crash of an AirAsia flight that killed all 162 people on board previous year, Indonesia’s transport safety committee says.
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The plane crash triggered a huge worldwide search, with ships and aircraft from several nations involved in a lengthy hunt that was hampered by unsafe sea waves and bad weather.
In their report, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee revealed the sequence of events which led to flight QZ8501 disappearing from the radar.
According to Guardian reports, the Airbus A320-200 was en route to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya on 28 December when it lost contact with air traffic control around 42 minutes after takeoff.
The pilot pulled a circuit breaker to reset the flight control computer to try to solve the problem.
That caused the autopilot to disengage and resulted in the aircraft rolling to an exceedingly steep 54 degree angle of bank turn.
Officials say the crew should have been able to recover, but they didn’t follow proper training. Investigators concluded the crew mistakenly responded to a speed sensor failure by pulling the nose up, causing a dangerously high pitch and ultimately a deadly stall over the southern Atlantic Ocean.
AirAsia’s ground crews had to fix the units twice in October 2014, and the number of malfunction incidents grew to five the following month and finally in December, the units broke down nine times, Nurcahyo said.
The investigators had previously confirmed that co-pilot Remi Plesel was in control of the flight when it crashed. The Rudder Travel Limiter, had suffered 23 problems in the past 12 months, citing maintenance records.
Investigators found communications between the pilots muddled as the plane plunged, with the men at one point pushing control sticks in opposite directions.
Indonesia’s aviation industry has been plagued with problems stemming largely from the explosion of travelers and new airlines in the archipelago of 250 million people.
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AirAsia’s boss Tony Fernandes seemed to suggest shared responsibility, in a tweet following the release of the report, that “there is much to be learnt here for AirAsia, the manufacturer and the aviation industry”.
