Co-pilot appears to have crashed Germanwings plane on purpose

A French gendarme helicopter flies over the moutainside crash site of an Airbus A320, near Seyne-les-Alpes, March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot

(Reuters) - A young German co-pilot locked himself alone in the cockpit of a Germanwings airliner and flew it into a mountain with what appears to have been the intent to destroy it, a French prosecutor said on Thursday.

Investigators and grieving relatives were left struggling to explain what motivated Andreas Lubitz, 28, to kill all 150 people on board the Airbus A320, including himself, in Tuesday's crash in the French Alps.

French and German officials said there was no indication the crash was a terrorist attack, but gave no alternative explanation for his motives.
Lubitz gained sole control of the aircraft after the captain left the cockpit. He refused to re-open the door and sent plane into its fatal descent, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said.

He did this "for a reason we cannot fathom right now but which looks like intent to destroy this aircraft," Robin told a news conference in Marseille broadcast live on national TV.

Describing the final 10 minutes of the passengers on board as the plane hurtled towards a mountain range, Robin said sound recordings from one of its black boxes suggested most of them would not have been aware of their fate until the very end.

"Only towards the end do you hear screams," he said. "And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous ... the aircraft was literally smashed to bits."

The CEO of Lufthansa, parent company of Germanwings, said its air crew were picked carefully and subjected to psychological vetting.

"No matter your safety regulations, no matter how high you set the bar, and we have incredibly high standards, there is no way to rule out such an event," CEO Carsten Spohr said.

The world's attention will now focus on the motivations of Lubitz, a German national who joined the budget carrier in September 2013 and had just 630 hours of flying time - compared with the 6,000 hours of the flight captain, named in German media only as "Patrick S." in accordance with usual practice.

Robin said there were no grounds to suspect that Lubitz was carrying out a terrorist attack. "Suicide" was also the wrong word to describe actions which killed so many other people, the prosecutor added: "I don't necessarily call it suicide when you have responsibility for 100 or so lives."

Police set up guard outside Lubitz's house in Montabaur, Germany. Acquaintances in the town said they were stunned, describing him as an affable young man who gave no indication he was harboring any harmful intent.

"I'm just speechless. I don't have any explanation for this. Knowing Andreas, this is just inconceivable for me," said Peter Ruecker, a long-time member of the local flight club where Lubitz received his flying license years ago.

"He was a lot of fun, even though he was perhaps sometimes a bit quiet. He was just another boy like so many others here."

A photo on Lubitz's Facebook page, which was later taken down, shows a smiling young man posing in front of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge.

Robin said the conversation between the two pilots before the captain left the cockpit started normally but that Lubitz's replies became "laconic" as they started readying what would have been the normal descent to the airport of Duesseldorf.

"His responses become very brief. There is no proper exchange as such," he said. It was not clear why the captain had left the cockpit but it was probably to use the toilet, he said.

Robin said the family of the co-pilot had arrived in France for a tribute alongside other those of the victims but was being kept apart from the others.

"SMASH THE DOOR DOWN"

The New York Times cited an unnamed investigator as saying the recording shed insight into the moment when it dawned on the captain that he had been shut out of the cockpit.

"The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer," it quoted an investigator described as a senior French military official as saying. "And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer."

"You can hear he is trying to smash the door down," the investigator added.

Investigators were still searching for the second of the two black boxes on Thursday in the ravine where the plane crashed, 100 km (65 miles) from Nice, which would contain data from the plane's instruments.

France's BEA air investigation bureau had said on Wednesday it expected the first basic analysis of the voice recordings in days.

Pilots may temporarily leave the cockpit at certain times and in certain circumstances, such as while the aircraft is cruising, according to German aviation law.

Cockpit doors can be opened from the outside with a code, in line with regulations introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, but the code can be overridden from inside the cockpit. Lufthansa's CEO said that either the pilot had entered the code incorrectly, or the co-pilot inside had overridden it.

The BEA on Wednesday already ruled out a mid-air explosion and said the scenario did not look like a depressurization.

Germanwings said 72 Germans were killed in the first major air passenger disaster on French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident just outside Paris. Madrid revised down on Thursday the number of Spanish victims to 50 from 51 previously.

As well as Germans and Spaniards, victims included three Americans, a Moroccan and citizens of Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Iran and the Netherlands, officials said. However, DNA checks to identify them could take weeks, the French government said.

The families of victims were being flown to Marseille on Thursday before being taken up to the zone close to the crash site. Chapels had been prepared for them with a view of the mountain where their loved ones died.

Source: Reuters

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VIDEO: New detailed images of Germanwings A320 crash site

A plane operated by the budget carrier of Germany's Lufthansa crashed in a remote area of the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 on board in France's worst aviation disaster in decades.

With the cause of the accident a complete mystery, authorities recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where rescue efforts were being hampered by the mountainous terrain.

Local MP Christophe Castaner, who flew over the crash site, said on Twitter: "Horrendous images in this mountain scenery."

"Nothing is left but debris and bodies. Flying over the crash site with the interior minister - a horror - the plane is totally destroyed."

Video images from a government helicopter flying near the area showed a desolate snow-flecked moonscape, with steep ravines covered in scree.
Budget airline Germanwings said the Airbus plunged for eight minutes but French aviation officials said the plane had made no distress call before crashing near the ski resort of Barcelonnette.



Source: The Telegraph

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Germanwings Airbus crashes in French Alps, 150 dead

An Airbus operated by Lufthansa's (LHAG.DE) Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote snowy area of the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 on board including 16 school children.

Germanwings confirmed its flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf went down with 144 passengers and six crew on board.

The airline believed there were 67 Germans on the flight. Spain's deputy prime minister said 45 passengers had Spanish names. One Belgian was aboard.

Also among the victims were 16 children and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in the town of Haltern am See in northwest Germany, a spokeswoman said.

Investigators described a scene of devastation where the airliner crashed.
"We saw an aircraft that had literally been ripped apart, the bodies are in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage," Bruce Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, told Reuters in Seyne-les-Alpes after flying over the crash zone in a helicopter.

French police at the crash site said no one survived and it would take days to recover the bodies due to difficult terrain, snow and incoming storms.

Police said search teams would stay overnight at altitude.

"We are still searching. It's unlikely any bodies will be airlifted until Wednesday," regional police chief David Galtier told Reuters.

In Paris, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament: "A helicopter managed to land (by the crash site) and has confirmed that unfortunately there were no survivors."

It was the first crash of a large passenger jet on French soil since the Concorde disaster just outside Paris nearly 15 years ago. The A320 is a workhorse of worldwide aviation fleets. They are the world’s most used passenger jets and have a good though not unblemished safety record.

SHARP DESCENT

Germanwings said the plane started descending one minute after reaching its cruising height and continued losing altitude for eight minutes.

"The aircraft's contact with French radar, French air traffic controllers, ended at 10.53 am at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. The plane then crashed," Germanwings' Managing Director Thomas Winkelmann told a news conference.

Winkelmann also said that routine maintenance of the aircraft was performed by Lufthansa on Monday.

Experts said that while the Airbus had descended rapidly, its rate of descent did not suggest it had simply fallen out of the sky.

France's DGAC aviation authority said air traffic controllers initiated distress procedures after they lost contact with the Airbus, which did not issue a distress call.

"The aircraft did not itself make a distress call but it was the combination of the loss of radio contact and the aircraft's descent which led the controller to implement the distress phase," a DGAC spokesman said.

The aircraft came down in an alpine region known for skiing, hiking and rafting, but which is hard for rescue services to reach.

The search and rescue effort based itself in a gymnasium in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has a small private aerodrome nearby.

Transport Minister Alain Vidalies told local media: "This is a zone covered in snow, inaccessible to vehicles but which helicopters will be able to fly over."

But as helicopters and emergency vehicles assembled, the weather was reported to be closing in.

STORMS, SNOW, CLOUD

“There will be a lot of cloud cover this afternoon, with local storms, snow above 1,800 meters and relatively low clouds. That will not help the helicopters in their work,” an official from the local weather center told Reuters.

Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr, who planned to go to the crash site, spoke of a "dark day for Lufthansa".

"My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew," Lufthansa said on Twitter, citing Spohr.

The airliner crashed about 100 km (65 miles) north of the French Riviera city of Nice. French and German accident investigators were heading for the crash site in Meolans-Revel, a remote and sparsely inhabited commune, not far from the Italian border.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would travel there on Wednesday. Germanwings and the Catalan regional government were preparing to take Spanish relatives to the site.

Family members arrived at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, many crying and with arms around each others’ shoulders, accompanied by police and airport staff.

King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain called off their state visit to France in a sign of mourning for the victims. They had arrived in Paris minutes after the crash happened.

Airbus (AIR.PA) confirmed that the plane was 24 years old, having first been delivered to Germanwings parent Lufthansa in 1991. It was powered by engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric (GE.N) and France's Safran (SAF.PA).

Source: Reuters

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Towelette with Malaysia Airlines logo washes up on beach

The paper towel was found in July last year, but the discovery has only just become public knowledge

The small, unopened, pre-moistened towel has been dispatched to Canberra for testing and verification, Nine News has reported.

If it is identified as being from the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the small paper towel will be the first scrap of evidence from the doomed plane.

The Boeing 777 aircraft –with 239 passengers and crew on board – vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 last year.

A record-breaking international search operation for the missing passenger plane has been taking place over the past 12 months in the Indian Ocean. Relatives of passengers and crew this weekend marked the anniversary of the mysterious disappearance.

Malaysian Prime Minster Najib Razak told mourning families he was still "hopeful" the Boeing 777 would be found.

Cervantes residents Kingsley and Vicki Miller stumbled across the towelette branded with a Malaysia Airlines logo some 125miles north of Perth.

The couple told Nine News the discovery was "very unusual".

They added: "If it had of been opened and found lying there it would have been completely different".

The paper towel was found in July last year, but the discovery has only just become public knowledge.

Officials have said it is "unlikely" the Malaysia Airlines towelette will definitely be linked back to the missing plane.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau told Agence-France Press: "A 6cm x 8cm moist towelette in wrapping branded with the Malaysia Airlines logo was found at Thirsty Point on 2 July, 2014.

"It was handed in to the WA [Western Australia] police.

"It is unlikely, however, that such a common item with no unique identifier could be conclusively linked with MH370."

The ongoing search for Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 has been narrowed to a patch of ocean floor some 1,000 miles from the coast of Perth.

Source: Express UK

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Harrison Ford injured in plane crash

Actor Harrison Ford was "battered but OK" Thursday after his vintage World War II training plane crash landed on a California golf course, authorities and family members said.

The 72-year-old actor, who was conscious and breathing when rescue crews reached him, was stabilized and taken to a hospital, where he was in fair to moderate condition, authorities said. Sources said he sustained cuts to his head. There was no word on other injuries or what caused the plane to crash about 2:20 p.m. (5:20 p.m. ET). It appeared he was flying solo.

Ben Ford, the well-known restaurateur and the actor's son, said on Twitter that his dad was "battered, but OK!" "We are very thankful that the passenger had [only] very moderate injuries," Los Angeles Assistant Fire Chief Patrick Butler said.

An eyewitness, Howard Teba, an employee at Penmar Golf Course, said he put a blanket under Ford's hip.

"There was blood all over his face," Teba said. "Two very fine doctors were treating him, taking good care of him."

The plane, a single-engine Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR, crashed on the golf course shortly after takeoff from Santa Monica Airport, said Patrick Jones, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. The pilot reported a loss of engine power, clipped the top of a tree and was trying to return to the airport, Jones said.

Photo of the crashed plane in Mar Vista, California

"I'm sure the pilot was glad there was a golf course here," he said.

Mike Bonin, a Los Angeles City Council member, agreed, telling NBC Los Angeles: "Thank God that this incident happened on a golf course where there is a relatively open space."

Bonis has lobbied to close the airport as being inadequate. "This airport is remarkably close to residential areas and flight schools, which is very concerning," he said.

His injuries were originally described as "critical," but sources emphasized they are better characterized as serious, including lacerations to the head and possible fractures.

An avid flyer of both planes and helicopters, Ford was in a bad crash of a Bell chopper in 1999 Santa Clara, California. In 2008, he told National Geographic, "Well, there was a mechanical failure while we were practicing power recovery autorotations. It was more or less a hard landing. Luckily, I was with another aviation professional and neither of us was hurt — and both of us are still flying."

The Federal Aviation Administration is joining the NTSB investigation, Jones said. He said the investigation could take as long as a year because the plane was a vintage model that didn't have a "black box" data recorder.

Source: CNBC News

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Wreckage of Chilean plane that crashed in the Andes 54 years ago found by mountaineers

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chilean mountaineers say they have found the wreckage of a plane that crashed in the Andes 54 years ago, killing 24 people, including eight members of a professional soccer team.

The group said they came across the wreckage at an altitude of about 10,500 feet about 215 miles south of Santiago, the capital. Expedition member Leonardo Albornoz told Chile's Channel 7 they're keeping the exact site secret to prevent looting.

The disappearance of the Douglas DC-3 carrying members of the top-division Chilean team Green Cross on April 3, 1961 was one of the great unsolved mysteries in the South American country and at the time stunned the sporting world.

The club had played an away match in Osorno in the Copa de Chile and was returning to Santiago. The team and staff were spread over two flights. One of the planes reached the Chilean capital and the other apparently vanished.

Rescuers spent fruitless weeks searching for the missing plane and symbolic funerals for the missing players drew huge crowds in Chile.

"It was a breathtaking moment and we felt all kinds of sensations. One could feel the energy of the place and breathe the pain," Albornoz said of apparent discovering the wreckage.

The mountaineers said they could see a good part of the fuselage without needing to dig it out and found scattered debris and bones. The location of the wreckage was not where official publications indicated it should be.

Green Cross played in Chile's first division until it was dissolved in 1965.

Source: USA Today

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UPDATE: AirAsia crash French copilot’s body recovered

Indonesian rescue workers unload bodies taken from the wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501

Reuters/Beawiharta

Divers have recovered a body they believe to be that of the French co-pilot of the AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the sea off Indonesia last December with 162 people on board.

The body that is believed to be that of Remi Plesel was found in the front part of the fuselage during a search operation on Friday.

It is in poor condition due to its time in the water but is wearing a uniform with a co-pilot’s insignia.

"It is likely the body of the French co-pilot, wearing uniform with three stripes on [the] shoulder," search and rescue coordinator SB Supriyadi told the AFP news agency.




A formal confirmation will be given after the Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team finishes identifying the body, he explained.

The AirAsia A320-200 crashed into the sea when flying between the Indonesian city of Surabaya and Singapore on 28 December.

It was later found 30 metres under water.

Indonesian investigators last month said that Plesel was flying the plane at the time of the crash, rather than Captain Iriyanto, an experienced former fighter pilot.

His family insist he was an "excellent" flyer.

Divers also found three bodies in the main body of the plane on Friday, bringing the total number retrieved to 101, Supriyadi said.

Rescuers are still trying to raise the fuselage from the seabed using giant inflatable bags, although previous attempts have failed.

Source: RFI

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TransAsia crash: 31 dead, airline providing compensation

Rescuers lift the wreckage of the TransAsia ATR 72-600 out of the Keelung river at New Taipei City on Feb 4, 2015. (Photo: AFP/ Sam Yeh)

TAIPEI: A total of 31 people were confirmed killed on Wednesday (Feb 4) when a passenger plane operated by TransAsia Airways clipped an overpass soon after take-off and plunged into the Keelung river in Taiwan, the airline's second crash in seven months.

In a statement, TransAsia Airways said that as of 9am on Thursday, another 15 people were injured in the incident. Twelve people remain missing from the 58 people on board flight GE235, and the two people in the taxi clipped by the plane are still hospitalised.


The airline has also started giving out emergency relief funds of NT$200,000 (S$8,600) to the families of those affected, including those on board and those who were on the taxi. Nine families have received the funds, and the airline is in the process of giving out the money to the remaining families.

TransAsia has also given out funeral allowance of NT$1.2 million (S$51,000) to the families of the victims who have been identified, it said.

TransAsia President Fred Wu also refuted media reports that said the plane's engines had not gone through the necessary checks before the flight took off on Wednesday.

"With regard to the engines, we are clarifying that there is no issue (with the engine checks)," said Mr Wu. "I can also produce the documents that were signed by the pilots and our crew that day. We will send these original documents to the Civil Aeronautics Administration and they can investigate this."

Source: Channel News Asia

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WATCH: TransAsia plane crashes in Taiwan river, killing at least 23 people

A TransAsia Airways flight in Taiwan carrying 58 passengers and crew careened past buildings, clipped a highway and crashed into a shallow stream, killing at least 23 people.

TransAsia GE 235, a domestic flight from Taipei to Kinmen – a small archipelago near mainland China – crashed at 10.56am local time, according to Taiwan’s aviation council, about three minutes after it took off. Astonishing dash-cam videos posted online showed the turboprop ATR 72-600 aircraft in its final airborne moments, turning vertical over a highway and clipping a taxi cab and a bridge with its left wing.

Rescuers are searching into the night for 20 missing people, after 15 were pulled alive from the wreckage.

“Several fire engines, ambulances, water craft and almost 170 rescue staff have been dispatched,” said a press release by the Taiwanese Central Disaster Response Centre. Local TV stations broadcasted footage of rescue workers in life vests and yellow helmets surrounding the plane’s fuselage in inflatable rafts.

At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” said Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the rescue, according to the Associated Press. “Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives.”

The driver of the clipped taxi cab “has been sent to a local hospital”, an assistant to the Crown Taxi Company’s general manager who identified himself as Mr Yang told the Guardian.

“He has head injury and concussion, but all of his vital signs are stable.” Yang added that the company planned to raise the topic of compensation with TransAsia Airways at a later date.

Rescuers carry out rescue operations after a TransAsia plane crashed into a river in New Taipei City. Photograph: Pichi Chuang/Reuters

The last communication from one of the aircraft’s pilots was “Mayday Mayday engine flameout”, according to an air traffic control recording on liveatc.net.

A flameout occurs when the fuel supply to the engine is interrupted or when there is faulty combustion, resulting in an engine failure.

The flight’s black box has been recovered, according to local media.

“Weather conditions were good and the pilot had 14,000 hours of flying hours and the co-pilot 4,000 hours,” Lin Zhiming, a representative from Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Authority, told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.

Search and rescue team members operate on a TransAsia Airways passenger plane crashed into the Keelung River in Taipei, Taiwan. Photograph: David Chang/EPA

Among the passengers were 31 mainland Chinese tourists, travelling with two local travel agencies: Teyung Group, and Flying Tours.
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Lin Liqing, manager of the Teyung Group, said that she had just arrived in Taipei to help with the handling of the incident.

“We are currently heading to the crash site and checking the passenger list with TransAsia Airways,” Lin said. She added that the passengers had been sent to eight local hospitals, and that she had not yet been able to visit them.

The manager of Flying Tours said that among 15 mainland Chinese tourists on the plane who were travelling with the agency, he had only confirmed one injured passenger – one of the two infants on board. He had no information on the remaining 14 people.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS showed rescuers pulling a toddler alive from the wreckage and rushing him or her to safety.

The chief executive of TransAsia, Chen Xinde, has publicly apologised for the crash.

Wednesday’s crash is the second by a TransAsia flight within the past six months — in July 2014, TransAsia flight ATR-72 crashed while attempting to land in the Penghu Islands soon after a typhoon, killing 48 people. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.

Source: The Guardian

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VIDEO: Philippine air force plane crashes at sea, killing 2 pilots

File photo of PAF trainer aircraft in formation. PAF photo PAF photo PAF photo

WATCH:


MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine air force said one of its Italian-made light planes crashed at sea on a training mission Saturday, killing the two pilots.

The single-prop SF-260FH was flying in formation with two other planes on a training flight when it crashed off Nasugbo township in Batangas province south of Manila, said air force spokesman Lt. Col. Enrico Canaya.

The planes also were taking part in activities commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the province from the Japanese toward the end of World War II, he said.

He said rescuers recovered the bodies of the pilot and the co-pilot about 300 meters (yards) from the shore.

Canaya also said that air force commander Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Delgado has ordered about 16 remaining SF-260FH planes grounded pending an investigation into the cause of the crash.

Some of training planes have been modified for combat missions against insurgents.

The Philippines military, one of the most poorly-equipped armed forces in Asia, is dealing with Muslim extremist and communist insurgents as well as incursions from China into waters it claims in the disputed South China Sea.

It plans to acquire a dozen FA-50 fighter jets from South Korea to beef up its air force by 2017.

Source: Yahoo! News
 
 

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AirAsia captain left seat before doomed jet lost control

Co-pilot of AirAsia flight QZ8501, Remi Emmanuel Plesel  Photo: AFP/Getty

The captain of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the sea in December was out of his seat conducting an unorthodox procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control, and by the time he returned it was too late to save the plane.

Details emerging of the final moments of Flight QZ8501 are likely to focus attention partly on maintenance, procedures and training, though Indonesian officials have stressed publicly that it is too early to draw any firm conclusions.

The Airbus A320 jet plunged into the Java Sea while en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board.

It had been suffering maintenance faults with a key flight control computer for over a week, and one person familiar with the matter said the captain had flown on the same plane with the intermittently faulty device just days before the crash.

AirAsia said it would not comment while the matter was under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) of Indonesia.

Reuters reported this week that maintenance problems on the Flight Augmentation Computer (FAC), and the way the pilots reacted to them, were at the heart of the investigation.

After trying to reset this device, pilots pulled a circuit-breaker to cut its power, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

People familiar with the matter told Reuters it was the Indonesian captain Iriyanto who took this step, rather than his less-experienced French co-pilot Remy Plesel, who was flying the plane.

The outage would not directly upset the aircraft but would remove flight envelope protection, which prevents a pilot from taking a plane beyond its safety limits, leaving the junior pilot to fly the jet manually in delicate high altitude conditions.

The decision to cut off the FAC has surprised people following the investigation because the usual procedure for resetting it is to press a button on the overhead panel.

"You can reset the FAC, but to cut all power to it is very unusual," said one A320 pilot, who declined to be identified. "You don't pull the circuit breaker unless it was an absolute emergency. I don't know if there was one in this case, but it is very unusual."

It is also significant because to pull the circuit breaker the captain had to rise from his seat.

The circuit breakers are on a wall panel immediately behind the co-pilot and hard or impossible to reach from the seated position on the left side, where the captain sits, according to two experienced pilots and published diagrams of the cockpit.

Shortly afterwards the junior pilot pulled the plane into a sharp climb from which investigators have said it stalled or lost lift.

"It appears he was surprised or startled by this," said a person familiar with the investigation, referring to the decision to cut power to the affected computer.

The captain eventually resumed control, but a person familiar with the matter said he was not in a position to intervene immediately to recover the aircraft from its upset.

Data already published on the plane's trajectory suggest it may have been difficult for someone to move around the cockpit in an upward-tilting and by then possibly unstable aircraft, but there is so far no confirmation of the cockpit movements.

"The co-pilot pulled the plane up, and by the time the captain regained the controls it was too late," one of the people familiar with the investigation said.

Tatang Kurniadi, chief of Indonesia's NTSC, told Reuters there had been no delay in the captain resuming control but declined further comment.

Airbus declined to comment.

Lawyers for the family of the French co-pilot say they have filed a lawsuit against AirAsia in Paris for "endangering the lives of others" by flying the route without official authorisation on that day. Investigators have said the accident was not related to the permit issue.

AirAsia did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

Although more is becoming known about the chain of events, people familiar with the investigation warned against making assumptions on the accident's cause, which needed more analysis.

Safety experts say air crashes are most often caused by a chain of events, each of which is necessary but not sufficient to explain the underlying causes of the accident.

Source: The Telegraph

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UPDATE: Divers find bodies belted in seats near AirAsia fuselage

PANGKALAN BUN: Indonesian divers Thursday (Jan 22) found five bodies still belted into their seats near the main section of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board, and are hopeful of reaching the fuselage.

A total of 58 bodies have now been found following the crash of flight QZ8501 which went down on Dec 28 in stormy weather as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

"Our divers found five bodies buried in mud, close to the plane fuselage. They were still belted to their seats," S.B. Supriyadi, a rescue agency official coordinating the search, told AFP. "We believe they spilled out of the fuselage, which is 50 to 100 metres away," he said.

Three bodies have been retrieved and taken to the warship Banda Aceh, while the other two were still being recovered, he said. He added that divers had yet to reach the main section of the plane, which is thought to contain the bulk of passengers and crew, as visibility under water was only two metres.

"But it is a bright, clear day so we remain optimistic that the divers might reach the wreckage today (Thursday)," he said.

The main body of the Airbus A320-200 was spotted on the seabed by a military vessel last week following an arduous search in shallow Indonesian waters, but strong underwater currents and rough seas have prevented divers from reaching it. The jet's black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - were recovered last week, and investigators are analysing them.

Indonesian Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said this week that the plane climbed abnormally fast before stalling and plunging into the sea. Just moments before the plane disappeared off the radar, the pilot had asked to climb to avoid a major storm but was not immediately granted permission due to heavy air traffic.

Source: Channel News Asia

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UPDATES: AirAsia plane climbed too fast, then disappeared

Investigators examining the tail of AirAsia flight QZ8501

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An AirAsia plane that crashed last month with 162 people on board was climbing at an abnormally high rate, then plunged and suddenly disappeared from radar, Indonesia’s transport minister said Tuesday.

Ignasius Jonan told Parliament that radar data showed the Airbus A320 was climbing at about 6,000 feet a minute before it disappeared on Dec. 28.

“It is not normal to climb like that, it’s very rare for commercial planes, which normally climb just 1,000 to 2,000 feet per minute,” he said. “It can only be done by a fighter jet.”

He said the plane then plunged and disappeared from radar.

Jonan did not say what caused the plane to climb so rapidly.

In their last contact with air-traffic controllers, the pilots of AirAsia Flight 8501 asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the plane disappeared. No distress signal was received.

An excessively rapid ascent is likely to cause an airplane to go into an aerodynamic stall. In 2009, an Air France Airbus A330 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators were able to determine from the jet’s “black boxes” that the plane began a steep climb and then went into a stall from which the pilots were unable to recover.

Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon said Tuesday that it was too early to comment on possible similarities between the two crashes.

Survey ships have located at least nine big objects, including the AirAsia jet’s fuselage and tail, in the Java Sea. The plane’s black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — have been recovered but are still being analyzed.

The plane was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, to Singapore.

Only 51 bodies have been recovered so far. Rough sea conditions have repeatedly prevented divers from reaching the wreckage.

Source: Washington Post

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BREAKING: Last words of crashed AirAsia flight's pilot revealed

Photo Credits: Reuters

Following the recovery of the two “black boxes” aboard the crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501, a story on Yahoo! News reports that “Allahuakhbar, Allahuakhbar were the last words [the pilots] said before they died.”

AirAsia Flight QZ8501, a flight out of Surabaya, Indonesia and bound for Singapore, took off early Sunday December 28, 2014 in what can only be described as violent weather.  The pilots, amidst the storm, radioed in, asking air traffic control for permission to turn left and climb to a higher altitude to avert the storm. A little while later, the plane crashed into the Java Sea, taking the lives of all 162 of its crew and passengers on board.

Search teams began looking for traces of the aircraft upon discovering that it was missing, only to find debris and several bodies floating 60 to 120 miles from the aircraft’s last known location over the Java Sea. Of the 162 people on board, only 48 bodies have been recovered so far.

Soon after, the international search efforts continued, and according to Fox News, “three Indonesian ships detected two strong pings being emitted from their beacons, about 22 yards apart.” The strong currents and large waves hindered divers' efforts throughout the 17-day search, “but they took advantage of calmer early morning conditions on both days to extract the instruments.”

Nurcahyo Utomo, a two decade old investigator who knew the pilot personally, had this to say about the recordings that were recovered from the wreckage:

    “Listening to the playback of a black box involved in a crash is not like listening to music or a discussion.

    “We are listening to a recording that represents the last moments before the crash and it is disturbing. There are times where the investigators would get unnerved listening to the recording.”

In analyzing the recordings and listening to the last words of the pilots, words like “Allahuakhbar” being repeatedly stated, the investigators got goose bumps.

“It is as if we can feel them... Allahuakhbar, Allahuakhbar were the last words said before they died,” said Nucahyo.

As of this moment, it is unclear what the pilots intended when uttering a phrase often associated with radical Islamic terrorists, many of whom have uttered the phrase before committing their heinous acts of terror: “Allahuakhbar, Allahuakhbar.”

Perhaps, in repeating “Allahuakhbar,” a phrase that literally means “god is the greatest,” the pilots were merely calling out to their god in a time of great peril – a moment that they believed would be their last.

One thing is for sure, hearing these final words, this last conversation, is key to revealing what caused the AirAsia flight to crash.

"We will know what really happened from the conversations between pilot and co-pilot prior to the crash,” said Nucahyo.

And certainly, listening to and analyzing the recordings of the last moments of Flight QZ8501 will be a tough thing to do for Captain Iriyanto, a junior to the pilot who died on board the downed plane.

Source: CNS News

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FOUND: Fuselage of AirAsia flight QZ8501

SINGAPORE: The main fuselage of the downed AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 has been found by a Republic of Singapore Navy vessel, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said on Wednesday (Jan 14).

He said the hoped that locating the main wreckage of the Airbus A320-200 aeroplane could help bring "some form of closure" to families of victims.

“Chief of Navy RADM Lai Chung Han just informed me that one of SAF’s ships, the MV Swift Rescue, has located the fuselage of the AirAsia plane in the Java Sea," Dr Ng said on Facebook.

"Images taken by the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) show part of the wing and words on the fuselage. We have informed BASARNAS, the Indonesian search authority, who can now begin recovery operations.



"The accident is a tragic event resulting in the loss of many lives. I hope that with the fuselage located, some form of closure can come to the families of the victims to ease their grief."

Dr Ng thanked the Singapore Armed Forces servicemen involved in the search operations, which also included the recovery of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders earlier this week.

"Especially to the crew of MV Swift Rescue, you never gave up - well done," he said.

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AirAsia crash: Cockpit voice-recorder found

Indonesian soldiers display the cockpit voice recorder of AirAsia QZ8501 on Tuesday.

Divers recovered the second of two black boxes from AirAsia AIRASIA, +4.20%  Flight 8501 on Tuesday, clearing the path for an investigation into the crash to begin in earnest.

Officials picked up the recorder by helicopter from a ship where divers had put it after retrieving it, and brought it to Pangkalan Bun, where they showed it to the media before loading it onto a plane for Jakarta.

Santoso Sayogo, an investigator from Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, talks to the WSJ's Deborah Kan about what the flight-data recorder and cockpit-voice recorder can tell us about what went wrong on AirAsia Flight 8501.

The recorder was sighted in 30 meters of water Monday, not far from where searchers recovered the first black box. Santoso Sayogo, an air-crash investigator with Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, said “hopefully” it would arrive at investigators’ offices in Jakarta Tuesday night. The two black boxes were found about 10 meters apart, he added.

The first black box was recovered Monday after an intensive search of the Java Sea and flown to Jakarta the same day. Investigators say the two data recorders offer the best chance of learning why the aircraft crashed.

The plane crashed Dec. 28 en route from Surabaya to Singapore with 162 passengers and crew aboard.

Source: MarketWatch

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Divers retrieve AirAsia 'black box', explosion theory questioned

The flight data recorder of AirAsia QZ8501 is transferred to another container at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

The flight data recorder from AirAsia QZ8501 is placed into a container upon its arrival at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan.
REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

Indonesian military policemen carry the flight data recorder from AirAsia QZ8501 into a media briefing at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan. REUTERS/Antara Foto/Prasetyo Utomo

WATCH VIDEO:
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian navy divers retrieved the black box flight data recorder from the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet on Monday, a major step towards unraveling the cause of the crash that killed all 162 people on board.

But there was confusion about what happened in the final moments of Flight QZ8501, which crashed off the Indonesian coast on Dec. 28, with one official saying the plane probably exploded before hitting the water and another disputing that theory.

The Airbus A320-200 airliner lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

"At 7:11, we succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters at a news conference.

The second so-called black box, containing the cockpit voice recorder, is located about 20 meters away from where the flight data recorder was found, but divers have not yet been able to get to it.

"(The cockpit voice recorder) seems to be under a wing, which is quite heavy," said Supriyadi, operations coordinator for the search and rescue agency. "So we will use air bags to lift it. This will be done tomorrow."

The black boxes contain a wealth of data that will be crucial for investigators piecing together the sequence of events that led to the airliner plunging into the sea.

Supriyadi said the wreckage indicated that the plane likely "experienced an explosion" before hitting the water due to a significant change in air pressure.

He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure that could have caused an explosion.

Supporting this possibility, Supriyadi added, was the fact that fishermen in the area had reported hearing an explosion and saw smoke above the water.


THEORY DISPUTED

But another official disputed the likelihood of a blast.

"There is no data to support that kind of theory," said Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee.

The flight data recorder was brought by helicopter to Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town that has been the base for the search effort, and then flown to Jakarta for analysis.

The black box looked to be in good condition, said Tatang Kurniadi, the head of the transport safety committee.

Investigators may need up to a month to get a complete reading of the data.

"The download is easy, probably one day. But the reading is more difficult ... could take two weeks to one month," the NTSC's head investigator, Mardjono Siswosuwarno, said.

Over the weekend, three vessels detected "pings" that were believed to be from the black boxes, but strong winds, powerful currents and high waves hampered search efforts.

Dozens of Indonesian navy divers took advantage of calmer weather on Monday to retrieve the flight recorder and search for the fuselage of the Airbus.

Forty-eight bodies have been retrieved from the Java Sea and brought to Surabaya for identification. Searchers believe more bodies will be found in the plane's fuselage.

Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.


ALTITUDE DATA INTERRUPTED

Sources close to the investigation say the aircraft's transponder transmitted data as it first rose sharply then fell from a peak of 38,000 feet, but that it stopped transmitting its altitude once it had completed a third of its descent.

The jet kept sending other data such as the speed of descent, which was the last parameter to be broadcast before it hit the water close to where wreckage was subsequently found.

It is not yet clear whether the gap in altitude data below 22-24,000 feet originated in the A320's systems or problems in transmission, underlining the importance of recovering complete evidence from the data recorder.

Separately, Airbus has begun talks with a European regulator on proposals to make ejectable flight recorders available on its two largest models, potentially making them the first commercial planes to use the technology.

Indonesia AirAsia, 49 percent owned by the Malaysia-based AirAsia budget group, has come under pressure from authorities in Jakarta since the crash.

The transport ministry has suspended the carrier's Surabaya-Singapore licence for flying on a Sunday, for which it did not have permission. However, the ministry has said this had no bearing on the crash.

President Joko Widodo said the disaster exposed widespread problems in the management of air travel in Indonesia.

Source: Yahoo! News

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