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AirAsia Jet Climbed Too Fast, Inquiry Finds A coffin bearing a body recovered Monday by Indonesian Navy divers from the undersea crash site of the AirAsia jet.  JAKARTA, Indonesia - The AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month had climbed at excessive speeds to an unusually high altitude before plunging and disappearing from radar, Indonesia's top transportation official said Tuesday. Radar data showed that the Airbus A320-200 had been climbing at about 6,000 feet a minute before it crashed, killing all 162 people aboard, Ignasius Jonan, the minister of transportation, told a parliamentary commission. "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 told lawmakers, The Associated Press reported. "It can only be done by a fighter jet." The plane, Flight 8501, crashed on Dec. 28 less than an hour after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya, bound for Singapore. As of Tuesday, forensic experts had identified 45 of 51 victims whose bodies, or body parts, had been recovered, officials said. Shortly before air traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 8501, the plane's pilots had requested permission to increase their altitude to 38,000 feet. The plane disappeared from radar around four minutes later, Indonesian transportation officials have said. Indonesian Navy divers last week separately recovered the aircraft's cockpit voice and data recorders amid debris and thick mud at a depth of around 100 feet in the Java Sea, off the southern coast of Borneo Island. The cause of the crash remains unclear, although weather has been cited as a probable factor. Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, which is evaluating data from the plane's black boxes, is expected to issue a preliminary report in the coming days. Search vessels also located the plane's fuselage last week, but surface waves as high as 16 feet and strong underwater currents have prevented Indonesian divers from reaching the wreckage to try to raise it using special inflatable balloons, said Jenny Wakana, an AirAsia spokeswoman in Surabaya. Indonesian officials said last week that they suspected the bodies of more victims were still inside the fuselage. That would mean that forensic identification operations at the crisis center in Surabaya, which have slowed in the last few weeks, could increase after the fuselage is raised to the surface, Indonesian officials said.

Stall Alarms Were Triggered, Says AirAsia Crash Investigator Cockpit Recording Shows Pilots Were Trying to Recover Plane, Says Investigator In this photograph taken on January 19, 2015, a member of Indonesia's search and rescue team walks past wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501 recovered at sea and stored in a warehouse for investigators in Kumai, Central Kalimantan on Borneo island.  JAKARTA, Indonesia-The stall warning of AirAsia Flight 8501 can be heard going off on the cockpit voice recorder, a crash investigator said Wednesday. "The warning [alarms] kept on screaming, and in the background, they [the pilot and co-pilot] were trying to recover the plane," the crash investigator speaking on condition of anonymity said. "But what they said wasn't clear," he added, citing the plane's cockpit voice recorder. He added that the flight data recorder also showed that the stall warnings were going off. The investigator's comments followed a description by Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan on Tuesday that the plane, which crashed on Dec. 28, stalled after climbing at a rate beyond the normal limit. The Airbus A320 jet turned away from its assigned flight path en route from Surabaya to Singapore, climbed at a rate of more than 8,000 feet a minute-six to eight times the normal rate-then descended and lost contact within three minutes, Mr. Jonan said, citing data from the plane's automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, or ADS-B, system. All 162 people aboard the flight from Surabaya to Singapore were killed. Indonesian investigators told The Wall Street Journal on Monday they haven't found any indication that terrorism or pilot suicide played a role in the crash. The stall warning of AirAsia Flight 8501 can be heard going off on the cockpit voice recorder. An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the carrier.