AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

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sn26567
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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

Post by sn26567 »

This does not appear in the daily AirAsia news releases: the captain of the AirAsia jet was out of his seat conducting an unusual procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control, and by the time he returned it was too late to save the plane.

Investigators were examining maintenance records of one of the automated systems, the Flight Augmentation Computer (FAC). The loss of the FAC would not directly alter the trajectory of the aircraft but would remove flight envelope protection, which prevents a pilot from taking a plane beyond its safety limits, and require the crew to fly it manually. 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.

More details: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/ ... 4E20150131
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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

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AirAsia Indonesia Flight QZ8501 UPDATE (as of 31st January 2015 6:30 PM (GMT+7)

SURABAYA, 31ST JANUARY 2015 – The National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) Republic of Indonesia officially resumed the search and rescue (SAR) operations today. SAR vessels continued to be mobilized this morning to observe the primary search area in Karimata Strait and Java Sea using sonar equipment to locate more passengers as well as search for the cockpit.

In addition, Makassar's SAR team continued the search and rescue efforts in the vicinity of Mamuju, West Sulawesi and Pare-Pare, South Sulawesi. The SAR operation was supported by two SAR vessels, four inflatable boats and sea riders. Local fishermen and residents were also deployed to locate additional remains and aircraft wreckage that are possibly still in the area. No additional recoveries were reported today.

The Disaster Victim Identification Police Department Republic of Indonesia (DVI POLRI) today announced that four passengers have been identified as: Nanang Priyo Widodo (male), Donna Indah Nurwatie (female), Adrian Fernando (male), and Viona Florensa Abraham (female). AirAsia Indonesia has officially handed over the remains to the respective families this afternoon.

To date, BASARNAS has confirmed to have recovered a total of 76 remains of which 64 remains have been identified by DVI POLRI, and 12 remains are still being identified at Bhayangkara Hospital, Surabaya.
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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

Post by Desert Rat »

if Both FAC's inop, Auto flight system will revert to Alternate law and max speed is limited...Rudder with care above 160 knots...

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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

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AirAsia QZ8501 wreckage retrieval called off

The Indonesia Navy has called off the retrieval mission of the wreckage of AirAsia QZ8501 after divers declared there were no more bodies inside the main fuselage, which has not been able to be lifted from the seabed of the Java Sea off Pangkalan Bun in south Borneo.

To date, 103 bodies have been recovered from the crash site and surrounding seas.

Previous attempts to lift the fuselage wreckage, along with strong sea currents, have caused the structure to partially disintegrate, making any further retrieval almost impossible.

The last section to be lifted, most of the wing and a small portion of fuselage, was pulled from the sea last Saturday.

Full story: http://atwonline.com/safety/airasia-qz8 ... val-called
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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

Post by sn26567 »

And short summary:

The crashed Air Asia Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea on December 28 last year, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. A flight control computer had a cracked solder joint that malfunctioned repeatedly, including four times during the flight, and 23 times the previous year.

Indonesian investigators said that crew action caused a loss of control and the stalling of the AirAsia passenger jet that crashed into the Java Sea last year, killing all 162 aboard.

The flight data recorder of AirAsia QZ8501 did not show any indication of weather condition affecting the aircraft.

Investigators found: The AirAsia maintenance system was not optimal but do not pinpoint single underlying cause.

Flight crew action resulted in the inability to control the aircraft, causing the aircraft to depart from the normal flight plan. The situation caused a prolonged stall condition that was beyond the capability of the flight crew to recover.

It appears budget carrier Air Asia may be at fault for lack of maintaining its aircraft.
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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

Post by Crosswind »

It appears that authorities may be at fault for lack of maintaining competences in the flight decks :!:

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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

Post by airazurxtror »

The report into last December’s AirAsia crash suggests significant parallels with the Air France disaster of 2009.
In both incidents, a technical issue helped trigger a chain of events in the cockpit where the pilots’ commands took the plane out of control. And on both occasions, a possibly disoriented co-pilot pulled back on his stick, pointing the nose of the plane up and putting it into a disastrous stall.

On this flight, on three occasions, an alert flashed in the cockpit telling pilots of a problem with the rudder controls. Three times, the pilots responded with a series of commands to restore it as instructed.
When the warning flashed for a fourth time in the space of 15 minutes, one of the pilots – possibly having seen a fix employed by an engineer on the ground – cut the circuits to reset the system, and disabled the autopilot.
With the rudder now not being immediately controlled, the plane banked quickly, to an angle of 54 degrees. In correcting this severe roll, the co-pilot appears to have pulled back on his controls. But he then continued to pull back even as the captain attempted to do the opposite, until the plane’s “angle of attack” was too near the vertical and it stalled, out of control, and plummeted.

David Learmount, of FlightGlobal, said: “These guys had more excuse than the AirFrance crew. This was a repetitive fault and they did the correct thing three times, before trying something else. And the aircraft was in an upset condition before the autopilot was switched off. But the pilot should have been aware of the fault. Had they used traditional pilot skills the aircraft [would have been] controllable, but once it was in a rapid dive it was difficult. They didn’t pick up the full import of what was happening to them.”

Learmount said the incidence of pilots losing control had increased as planes had become more and more automated, as a US Federal Aviation Administration report had shown. He said: “Most of the time computers are brilliant and accurate and we learn to trust them, but when they do go wrong it’s very unsettling. Very rarely does anything serious go wrong with the plane or its computers but if it does, the pilots often don’t cope.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/d ... e-disaster
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Re: AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 missing / crashed

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Indonesia will inspect all 75 A320s flown by domestic airlines in the Southeast Asian nation, and introduce more pilot training, following a report this week that cited component failure and pilot response as factors in the crash of an Indonesia AirAsia flight in 2014 that killed 162 people.
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