Flight 8501: Minister reveals plane climbed too steeply
Indonesia's transport minister gives the first official explanation of the crash.
In the first official explanation of why Flight 8501 crashed, Indonesia’s transport minister says it stalled after apparently climbing far too steeply.
The AirAsia Indonesia jet crashed into the Java Sea on December 28 with the loss of 162 lives.
“The plane may have climbed in the last minutes at a speed beyond normal limits,” Ignasius Jonan said when elaborating on an statement he made earlier in a hearing in the parliament.
“After that, it stalled. Why did it stall? I don’t know,” he added.
The aircraft turned left away from its assigned flight path en route from Surabaya to Singapore, climbed at more than 8000ft a minute – six to eight times the normal rate – then descended and lost contact within three minutes, Mr Jonan said, citing data from the plane’s automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast system.
He says no conclusions should be drawn about the cause of the accident before the National Transportation Safety Committee completes its investigation.
The plane had requested to turn and climb, apparently because of bad weather. But air-traffic controllers didn’t approve the changes immediately because they wanted to check whether other aircraft were in the vicinity.
By the time the controllers tried to contact the pilots with permission to climb, the aircraft was lost.
Monsoon storms were reported along the two-hour flight path, though several other planes crossed the area safely that day.
The black box recorders have been recovered and investigators are analysing their data.
A total of 53 bodies have been found as of yesterday. Search officials are still considering how to raise the fuselage from the seabed.
Nevil Gibson
Wed, 21 Jan 2015
Wed, 21 Jan 2015
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Flight 8501: Minister reveals plane climbed too steeply
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