Faulty equipment and the crew’s “inability to control the aircraft” led an AirAsia A320 to crash into the Java Sea last year, killing all 162 people onboard, a report said yesterday.
Flight QZ8501 went down in stormy weather on Dec. 28, during what was supposed to be a short flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
The crash of the Airbus A320-200 triggered a huge international search, with ships and aircraft from several nations involved in a lengthy hunt that was hampered by strong currents and bad weather.
Photo: Reuters
The bodies of 56 victims were never recovered.
In their final report on the accident, Indonesia’s official National Transportation Safety Committee said a major factor was a fault with a system that helps control the rudder’s movement.
Cracked soldering in the component caused it to malfunction and send repeated warning messages to the pilots. When they received the fourth warning, the pilots pulled circuit-breakers on one of the aircraft’s computers, removing power from the faulty system in a bid to reset it. However, in doing so, they also turned off the plane’s autopilot.
“Subsequent flight crew action resulted in inability to control the aircraft,” the report said.
The plane went into a “prolonged stall condition that was beyond the capability of the crew to recover,” it said.
It added that the flight data recorders did not indicate the weather had affected the aircraft.
The report said that the faulty component, the Rudder Travel Limiter, had suffered 23 problems in the past 12 months, citing maintenance records.
An Indonesian minister previously described how the plane climbed fast and then went into aerodynamic stall, losing lift, before it went down, while an investigator said the warning alarms were “screaming” as the pilots desperately tried to stabilize the aircraft.
Investigators had also said that the French copilot, Remi Plesel, was at the controls of the AirAsia plane in the moments before it crashed, rather than the more experienced pilot, Captain Iriyanto, who had about 20,000 hours of flying time.
Rescuers faced difficulties in the choppy waters of the Java Sea, but the main body of the plane was eventually located on the seabed by a Singapore navy ship and both black box data recorders were recovered. Search efforts were finally called off in March after almost three months of hunting.
It was one of several aviation disasters in the sprawling archipelago in the past year and the first major setback for Malaysia-based AirAsia group and its flamboyant boss Tony Fernandes after a spectacular run of success.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese