The Associated Press
Published: January 20,2015
Indonesia’s transportation minister released new details Tuesday about the final minutes of AirAsia Flight 8501.
Ignasius
Jonan told Parliament that radar data showed the Airbus A320 was
climbing at the abnormally high rate of 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."
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.
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There
were 162 people on board the flight. Only 53 bodies have been found so
far as rough waters and rain have dampened the recovery efforts from the
very beginning.
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.
"So
far, we've managed to download and transcribe half of the cockpit voice
recorder," said Nurcahyo Utomo, a commissioner with the National
Transportation Safety Committee. "It is too early to draw any conclusion
yet because we don't know what is in the remaining half."
He said there was no indication of terrorism, and there were no other voices in the cockpit other than the pilot and co-pilot.
The plane was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore.
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