2 January 2015 Last updated at 06:46 GMT
AirAsia Recovery Slowed by Weather as Divers Deployed
It took about two minutes for air-traffic control to respond to AirAsia Bhd. (AIRA)'s ill-fated Flight 8501 when the pilot requested permission to fly higher, according to Indonesia's air navigation operator.
In the final communication from the plane, one of the pilots asked to climb 38,000 feet, said Wisnu Darjono, director at AirNav Indonesia, citing a transcript of the conversation from the National Transport Safety Committee. Air traffic control authorized the plane to ascend only to 34,000 feet about two minutes later, after which contact was lost, Darjono said.
Accuweather.com data shows there were storms along the path of the plane, which Indonesia's air transport director has said was flying at 32,000 feet (9,800 meters.) There were six planes at different altitudes passing in the area at the time, which contributed to the delayed response, according to AirNav.
Air-traffic control "couldn't immediately give permission to fly at 38,000 feet because checks needed to be made to see if there were other planes nearby," Darjono said in a phone interview. The "pilot didn't reply."
Radar data appeared to show that AirAsia made an unbelievably steep climb before it crashed, possibly pushing it beyond the plane's limits, Reuters reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the probe's initial findings.
As divers seek to find the plane's black boxes, those final minutes may provide crucial clues as to what caused the Airbus Group NV (AIR) A320 plane to crash on Dec. 28 with 162 people on board into the ocean near Pangkalan Bun, about 600 miles southeast of Singapore. Rescuers started pulling bodies and debris from the water yesterday.
Pilots' Hands
AirNav can't publish the transcript, as only the National Transport Safety Committee has the authority to do so, Darjono said. He declined to provide further details from the transcript.
Two minutes to answer a pilot's request for permission to elevate is not necessarily unusual, depending on how much traffic a controller is watching, said Bill Parrot, a retired airline pilot and associate professor of aviation at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois. In some busy markets, such as Chicago, a controller may be monitoring up to eight frequencies at once, he said.
"There is a point of time when a sense of urgency really is in the hands of a pilot," he said. "If a pilot declares an emergency, they can do pretty much whatever they want to do."
AirAsia QZ8501 underwater search to begin
Debris from the plane has been brought to shore but the fuselage is still missing
The search for AirAsia flight QZ8510
which crashed into the sea on Sunday is set to move underwater, with the arrival
of specialist equipment.
A French crash investigation team will use sensitive acoustic detection
devices to try locate the plane's "black box" flight recorder.The Airbus A320-200 was flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board when it vanished.
No survivors have been found and the cause of the crash remains unknown.
Several more bodies were located on Friday, bringing the total found to 16
France sends search experts to jet crash scene
Jan 2 (Reuters) - France's BEA crash investigation agency said a specialist black box search team and equipment arrived on Friday at the search area for the Indonesia AirAsia flight which crashed on Sunday en route from Indonesia to Singapore.
The agency said a ship carrying two hydrophones, or underwater listening devices, was bound for the suspected crash site with French, Singaporean and Indonesian experts on board.
Investigators hope the black boxes will reveal the sequence of events both in the cockpit and the jet's systems, but safety experts stress it is too early to say what caused the crash.
The BEA assists in investigation of any air crash involving an Airbus aircraft because the company is France-based.
It is also seen as specialised in underwater searches after leading a two-year search for an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.
Specialists join AirAsia jet search, more bodies recovered
A specialist multinational team armed with acoustic equipment will arrive at the suspected crash site of a sunken AirAsia jet off Borneo on Friday, bolstering the search for the plane's black box flight recorders.
Bad weather has hampered the search, keeping divers from looking for the wreck of the Airbus A320-200, which was carrying 162 people when it crashed on Sunday en route from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
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