AirAsia QZ8501 black box cockpit recordings: 'no evidence of terrorism or explosion'

Well this announcement was pretty quick IMO. According to the article there was no indication of any sort of highjacking or forced entry into the cockpit. IMO this is just an accident that involved getting an Airbus into weather it could not handle or the pilots could not handle.

When all is said and done my money would be on the flight management system getting bad information from all it's myriad of sensors and contributing to loss of control or improper actions by the pilots.

Indonesian investigators said on Monday they had found no evidence so far that terrorism played a part in the crash of an AirAsia passenger jet last month that killed all 162 people on board.


Andreas Hananto told Reuters that his team of 10 investigators at the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) had found "no threats" in the cockpit voice recordings to indicate foul play during AirAsia Flight QZ8501

Link to article.

There have been previous air incidents where the pilot flew into the area marked as black on the weather radar. Unfortunately, the raindrops/hailstones were so large that the area marked as black was actually where the largest hailstones were.

a reply to: stormcell

There has been a lot of identification and training for attenuation and avoiding cells where it may occur.

I'm with 727Sky. This is shaping up as a similar repeat of AF447.

a reply to: 727Sky

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Fixed

Hope you don't mind sky

I seriously hope they release some detailed data on this one. I'm sure it's most likely pilot error as has been discussed on these boards. I'm still going with stall and if the pilot was also trying to turn I'm going with "fell out of the sky like a brick" stall.

The considerations are:

It was near it's ceiling altitude

There was severe weather

They asked to climb to near ceiling altitude in storm conditions

They climbed despite other aircraft in the vicinity before ATC clearance

The climb didn't sustain sufficient acceleration indicating stall conditions

There was 6 minutes from ATC contact to off radar

Indications are that control readings matched ATC readings

There weren't any indication from the controls or pilot /copilot of malfunctioning instruments

The instruments were emitting warning sounds during the last minutes of the flight, as they should

The pitot tube issue had been fixed and there are further procedures for testing control readings

Conclusion: as investigators are saying it was likely a weather influenced incident. It wasn't sustaining acceleration needed for altitude, near ceiling height in a storm, it nose dived vertically into the sea and exploded on impact. Verdict most likely a stall situation.

abc

The final minutes of the AirAsia flight were full of "sounds of machines and sounds of warnings" that must be filtered out to get a complete transcript of what was said in the cockpit, said Mr Hananto, who has been an air safety investigator since 2009.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Yep when you are heavy and at max altitude you can enter into coffin corner.. Just a few knots to fast you get a high speed buffet and two slow you stall. In either situation the aircraft can depart the normal flight envelope.

It is not that unusual to see large fluctuations in airspeed during turbulence encounters. That is one of the reasons aircraft have turbulence penetration speeds (both indicated and Mach) which should be used and will cover most upset conditions and structural airframe considerations.. Very basic airmanship 101..

Easy to cast stones for we were not there.

a reply to: 727Sky

Based on the size of debris and how relatively intact pieces are I would wager a failed water landing. That's just a guess of course.

a reply to: Xcathdra

My money is on a stall, with a nose high flat impact. High vertical component, low horizontal component.

a reply to: Zaphod58

My money is on a stall, with a nose high flat impact. High vertical component, low horizontal component.

The bodies should tell that. Broken necks.

To sum it all up. Pilot error.

a reply to: samkent

The debris already points to that. The fuselage intact and portion of the wing attached is usually a sign it fell almost straight down.

originally posted by: samkent
a reply to: Zaphod58

My money is on a stall, with a nose high flat impact. High vertical component, low horizontal component.

The bodies should tell that. Broken necks.

To sum it all up. Pilot error.

If they had their seat belts on, I think you'd find (if it was high vertical component) that most of the passengers would be cut in half. A little grisly (sorry), but if the seats hold, the belt area is almost like a garote during impact.

Cheers - Dave