Indonesian Air Force personnel carry airplane parts recovered from the water near the site where AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared, at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Borneo, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014.Dewi Nurcahyani/The Associated Press
Bodies and wreckage were recovered Tuesday from the Java Sea where AirAsia Flight 8501 slammed into the water killing all 162 passengers and crew on board.
Recovery of bodies will be the first priority, followed by the so-called black boxes – actually bright orange and each equipped with a 30-day "pinger" to aid location. Finding them should be relatively straightforward in the shallow waters at the crash site only 15 kilometres from where Indonesian AirAsia's Airbus A320 vanished from radar shortly after dawn on Sunday as it flew into a line of towering thunderstorms.
(AirAsia Flight 8501: What we know so far about the plane's disappearance)
Relatively new, the six-year-old Airbus was equipped with sophisticated digital flight data and cockpit voice recorders, capable of detailing hundreds of parameters. They will allow investigators to reconstruct, with second-by-second precision, the exact chronology of the pilots' actions as they flew into a massive tropical storm. The voice recorder will reveal what the pilots said to each other. The flight data recorder will show how the controls were handled and whether there were any mechanical or electrical failures during the doomed flight's last minutes.
Sensitive hydrophones designed to detect the "pings" from the flight recorders were being sent to the crash site from Singapore. High waves and an approaching storm were making recovery efforts more difficult at the crash site off the Borneo coast.
SB Supriyadi, Indonesia's national search and rescue director, who had flown over the site, said aircraft wreckage was apparently visible beneath the relatively shallow water – less than 30 metres deep.
"The challenge is waves up to three-metres high," said Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency.
Family members of those aboard Flight 8501 collapsed in agony as images of debris and a bloated body flashed across Indonesian television screens. A life jacket and an emergency exit door were found in aqua-colored waters. Parts of the jetliner's interior, including an oxygen tank, were brought to the nearest town, Pangkalan Bun. Another find included a bright blue plastic suitcase, completely unscratched.
"I know the plane has crashed, but I cannot believe my brother and his family are dead," said Ifan Joko, who lost seven relatives, three of them children, as they travelled to Singapore to ring in the New Year. "We still pray they are alive."
The flight bound from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore vanished minutes after its pilots requested permission to climb from 32,000 to 38,000 feet, apparently in an attempt to fly over the storms.
"My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ8501," said AirAsia's chief executive Tony Fernandes, the flamboyant Malaysian entrepreneur who turned AirAsia into the dominant regional carrier with low fares, few frills and an admirable safety record.
Mr. Fernandes, who flew to Surabaya, where hundreds of grieving relatives were coping with the grim images of bodies being fished from the sea, said: "I am the leader of this company, and I have to take responsibility. That is why I'm here. I'm not running away from my obligations."
Determining the sequence of events that led to the crash will take months but recovery of the flight recorders should simplify the task.
The accident investigation will be led by Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, because the aircraft was registered in that country and crashed in international waters.
Investigators will want to know which pilot was flying as the A320 approached the huge storm system.
The captain, Iriyanto, an Indonesian who uses only one name, was a former Indonesian air-force fighter pilot with more than 20,537 flying hours, of which 6,100 were on Indonesia AirAsia Airbus A320s. The less experienced co-pilot was Rémi Emmanuel Plesel, a French citizen who gained his pilot's licence at age 42 and had 2,275 hours on the Airbus A320.
Usually, one pilot flies a flight segment while the other operates the radios and communicates with air-traffic control. It's not yet known who was the "pilot flying" the flight. However, in case of difficulties or unforeseen problems, the captain can, and usually does, take control.
About 50 minutes after takeoff, the twin-engined Airbus A320 was already at its planned cruising altitude and nearly halfway to Singapore when the "pilot not flying" asked air-traffic control for permission to climb from 32,000 to 38,000 feet. The request was denied because of other aircraft already occupying the higher flight altitudes. A few minutes later – at 6:17 a.m. local time – controllers offered Flight 8501 permission to climb to 34,000 feet, but there was no reply.
Suggestions that air-traffic control should have immediately accommodated the AirAsia pilots' request for an altitude change misinterpret aviation protocols. An aircraft captain can always – in an emergency – change course or altitude and, if pilots declare an immediate need for safety reasons to air-traffic control, they will be given priority.
However, routine requests for deviations are accommodated only if they won't create a potential collision conflict with other flights in the area.
With a report from Associated Press