Indonesia probe: Rudder control problem led to AirAsia crash

The crash in the Java Sea on December 28 previous year killed 162 people out of which 155 were from Indonesia, three from South Korea and one each from Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and France.

In their first public report, Indonesian investigators did not pinpoint a single reason why the Airbus A320 disappeared from the radar.

AirAsia flight Crash Caused By Pilot Response To Equipment Malfunction: Indonesian Investigators Say Pilot Response To Equipment Malfunction Caused AirAsia QZ8501 Crash, Maintenance records showed that it glitched 23 additional times in the year leading up to AirAsia flight Crash crash, CNN adds.

When they received the fourth warning, the pilots tried to reset a computer system but also turned off the plane’s autopilot, sending it into a sharp roll from which they were unable to recover.

The report says the plane had banked sharply at one point, and the crew struggled to bring it back under control.

“The pilot said, ‘Pull down, pull down.’ But when you pull down [the gear controls] the plane goes up”.

An official from the National Transportation Safety Committee said that analysis of the flight data recorder showed that warning signs had popped up four times due to disturbances in the rudder control system after the plane departed for the two-hour flight. An Airbus spokesman said the company was studying the report. “This extreme situation might have caused the cracking”, KNKT investigator Nurcahyo Utomo said at a press conference announcing the results.

In a statement, AirAsia Indonesia CEO Sunu Widyatmoko said the carrier had made changes to its procedures, including recurrent training for pilots on how to recover from an unstable situation.

Ruth Simatupang, a former Indonesian aviation investigator who was not involved with the report, questioned how the rudder system problems could have continued without any proper action by AirAsia or the government.

At the time of the crash it was thought that bad weather could have been a contributing factor, but this appears to have been ruled out.

The plane instead went into a prolonged stall, after which it was impossible for the crew to carry out remedial measures, according to the report.

‘Our recommendation to AirAsia is to train their pilots flying the Airbus plane on how to make an upset recovery’.

“There is much to be learned here for AirAsia, the manufacturer and the aviation industry”, AirAsia parent group founder Tony Fernandes said on Twitter.

The plane went from cruising at 32,000 feet, ascending steeply to 37,400 feet in about 30 seconds – something commercial planes are not created to do.