Indonesia's
National Transport Safety committee has released the details of its
investigation into the downing of AirAsia Flight QZ8501. The tragedy was the
result of computer and human error, it said.
Deutsche Welle, 1 Dec 2015
The final
report on the crash of an AirAsia flight that killed 162 people last year
blamed the disaster on a combination of a technical fault and subsequent crew
action. The findings were released on Tuesday after a nearly 12-month
investigation into the tragedy.
The initial
problem was a cracked soldering joint on part of the aircraft's computer system
- specifically the Rudder Travel Limited system - which controls the rudder's
movement. According to the report, this had caused a series of malfunctions -
23 times in the year leading up to the December 28, 2014, crash and four times
during the last flight of the Airbus A320 airplane.
"Subsequent
flight crew action resulted in inability to control the aircraft ... causing
the aircraft to depart from the normal flight envelope and enter a prolonged
stall condition that was beyond the capability of the flight crew to
recover," said a statement from Indonesia's National Transport Safety
committee.
After the
fourth warning signal about the malfunction, the pilots of Flight QZ8501
flipped the circuit breakers on part of the plane's control panel in an attempt
to reset the system. Instead, this caused the autopilot to switch off and the
aircraft started to roll.
The report
also stated that information from the flight data recorders did not enable
investigators to determine what role the stormy weather that day played in the
downing of the flight.
Flight
QZ8501 had taken off from Surabaya, Indonesia, and was bound for Singapore. It
crashed less than halfway into the two-hour flight. The disaster helped
highlight the problematic traffic volume of flights in Southeast Asia, as air
travel in the region increases in affordability and popularity.
es/tj (AFP, dpa, Reuters)
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