AirAsia QZ8501: Pilot response to equipment malfunction caused crash
(CNN) – The way pilots responded to a technical malfunction resulted in the crash of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, investigators said Tuesday.
The plane was en route to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya on December 28 last year when it crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 162 people on board.
The plane’s flight control computer had a cracked solder joint that kept malfunctioning. Aircraft maintenance records found it had malfunctioned 23 times in the year before the crash, and the interval between those incidents became shorter in the three months prior to the crash, Indonesia’s National Transport Safety Committee said in a report.
