Investigators hope to get clues to AirAsia crash in days

[webfact]

Investigators hope to get clues to AirAsia crash in days



JAKARTA: -- Indonesian investigators began examining on Wednesday the black box flight recorders from an Indonesia AirAsia passenger jet that crashed more than two weeks ago, and hope to unlock initial clues to the cause of the disaster within days, The Jakarat Globe reported.

Divers retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders this week from the sunken wreckage of Flight QZ8501, which lost contact with air traffic control halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya to Singapore. All 162 people on board were killed.

The recorders have been lifted from the bottom of the Java Sea and sent to Jakarta for analysis. Both were found to be in relatively good condition.

“In one week, I think we will be getting a reading,” Mardjono Siswosuwarno, head investigator for the National Transportation Safety Committee, said.

The so-called black boxes — which are actually orange — contain a wealth of data that will be crucial for investigators piecing together the sequence of events that led to the Airbus A320-200 plunging into the sea.

The flight data recorder took only 15 minutes to download, but investigators will now need to analyze up to 25 hours of data and several thousand flight parameters coving things such as flying speed, altitude, fuel consumption, air pressure changes and inputs to the aircrafts controls.

Investigators were expected later on Wednesday to begin downloading data from the cockpit voice recorder, which retains the last two hours of conversations on the flight deck and between the pilots and air traffic controllers.

Source: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/investigators-hope-get-clues-airasia-crash-days


-- Thai PBS 2015-01-15

[iReason]

Looks like those muttonheads in the pic are having a jolly good time.

[ezzra]

Got an Email from Air Asia CEO Toney Fernandez there other day thanking me/us for understanding

and being patient blah blah blah...

so I wrote back saying how come we never hear from you on other times, only where there is

a calamity of your airline? all that time when you're busy racing cars and buying football

clubs we never here a pip out of you.... got a reply saying that my email will only be answerd

if I post it on their website... Oh well...

[Bwanatickey]

Of course they have the right to be pleased, to find and then retrieve the black box in heavy weather deserves a well done to the divers, and the crew who took care of them.

[NeverSure]

"AirAsia crash: plane was climbing too fast before plunge, says minister."

"Indonesian official says Airbus A320 was rising at about 6,000ft a minute, which ‘can only be done by a fighter jet’"

"An AirAsia plane that crashed last month with 162 people on board was climbing at an abnormally rapid rate, before it plunged and disappeared from radar, Indonesia’s transport minister has said.

Ignasius Jonan told parliament that radar data showed the Airbus A320 was climbing at about 6,000ft a minute before it disappeared on 28 December. “It is not normal to climb like that, it’s very rare for commercial planes, which normally climb just 1,000 to 2,000ft per minute,” he said. “It can only be done by a fighter jet.”

He did not say what was believed to have caused the plane to climb so rapidly."

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In pilot-speak, you can trade speed for altitude. When at cruise speed if you need a sudden climb, you can pull the nose up and the plane will climb rapidly as it loses speed. But you must pay attention to airspeed and level off before so much speed is lost that the wings could stall.

Also, in an updraft, the plane can rise with no attempt to climb and with little or no loss of airspeed. Rapid updrafts (and downdrafts) are common in thunderstorms.

It's inaccurate to say it "can only be done by a fighter jet’" It would be accurate to say that the Airbus can't sustain that rate of climb.

So there's still no deciding factor on what caused the crash, but obviously they are working on it.