AirAsia Flight QZ8501 victim with life jacket raises new questions about plane’s last moments

A body recovered on Wednesday from the crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 was wearing a life jacket, an Indonesian search and rescue official said, raising new questions about how the disaster unfolded.

Rescuers believe they have found the plane on the ocean floor off Borneo, after sonar detected a large, dark object beneath waters near where debris and bodies were found on the surface.

Ships and planes had been scouring the Java Sea for AirAsia Flight QZ8501 since Sunday, when it lost contact during bad weather about 40 minutes into its flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

AIrAsia QZ8501: In this image taken from video released by TV One, a rescuer is lowered on rope from a hovering helicopter near a body in Java Sea waters, Indonesia Tuesday. (AP)

Seven bodies have been recovered from the sea, some fully clothed, which could indicate the Airbus A320-200 was intact when it hit the water. That would support a theory that it suffered an aerodynamic stall. The fact that one person put on a life jacket suggests those on board had time before the aircraft hit the water, or before it sank.

Relatives of passengers of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 pray at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, Indonesia. Wind, strong currents and high surf hampered recovery efforts as distraught family members anxiously waited to identify their loved ones. (AP)

And yet the pilots did not issue a distress signal. The plane disappeared after it asked for permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather.

“This morning, we recovered a total of four bodies and one of them was wearing a life jacket,” Tatang Zaenudin, an official with the search and rescue agency, said.

Relatives of passengers of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 pray at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, Indonesia. Wind, strong currents and high surf hampered recovery efforts as distraught family members anxiously waited to identify their loved ones. (AP)

Another AirAsia jet in emergency: Check out tweet

BREAKING NEWS: Another #AirAsia plane overshoots in Kalibo runway, #Philippinespic.twitter.com/SR3ZeXEH2M — Breaking News (@NewsOnTheMin) December 30, 2014

Read story: Another AirAsia jet in emergency, escapes tragedy He declined to speculate on what the find might mean. A pilot who works for a Gulf carrier said the life jacket indicated the cause of the crash was not “catastrophic failure”. Instead, the plane could have stalled and then come down, possibly because its instruments iced up and gave the pilots inaccurate readings. “There was time. It means the thing didn’t just fall out of the sky,” said the pilot, who declined to be identified.

Also read: Post-AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crash, airline’s India arm under govt scanner

Air force officers show airplane parts and a suitcase found floating on the water near the site where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 disappeared, during a press conference at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Borneo, Indonesia. (AP)

He said it could take a minute for a plane to come down from 30,000 feet and the pilots could have experienced “tunnel vision … too overloaded” to send a distress call. “The first train of thought when you get into a situation like that is to fly the aircraft.” Most of those on board were Indonesians. No survivors have been found. In the wake of AirAsia FlightQZ8501 crash and tragedies of Malaysian Airlines jets (MH17 and MH370) tell us how safe is aviation:

Hernanto, head of the search and rescue agency in Surabaya, said rescuers believed they had found the plane on the sea bed with a sonar scan in water 30-50 metres (100-165 feet) deep. The black box flight data and cockpit voice recorder has yet to be found. Authorities in Surabaya were making preparations to receive and identify bodies, including arranging 130 ambulances to take victims to a police hospital and collecting DNA from relatives. “We are praying it is the plane so the evacuation can be done quickly,” Hernanto said.

Commander of Indonesian Air Force 1st Operational Command Rear Marshall Dwi Putranto, center, shows the airplane parts and a suitcase found floating on the water near the site where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 disappeared, during a press conference at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Borneo, Indonesia. (AP)

Strong wind and waves hampered the search and with visibility at less than a kilometre (half a mile), the air operation was called off in the afternoon. “We are all standing by,” Dwi Putranto, heading the air force search effort in Pangalan Bun on Borneo, told Reuters. “If we want to evacuate bodies from the water, it’s too difficult. The waves are huge and it’s raining.” Check out the conversation on Airasia flight QZ8501 on Twitter timeline: #QZ8501 Tweets Indonesian President Joko Widodo said his priority was retrieving the bodies. Relatives, many of whom collapsed in grief when they saw the first grim television pictures confirming their fears on Tuesday, held prayers at a crisis centre at Surabaya airport.  AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes has described the crash as his “worst nightmare”. EXPERIENCED PILOT The plane was travelling at 32,000 feet (9,753 metres) and had asked to fly at 38,000 feet. When air traffic controllers granted permission for a rise to 34,000 feet a few minutes later, they received no response.

AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes, center, talks to media during a press conference at the crisis center at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014. (AP)

Online discussion among pilots has centred on unconfirmed secondary radar data from Malaysia that suggested the aircraft was climbing at a speed of 353 knots, about 100 knots too slow, and that it might have stalled. Investigators are focusing initially on whether the crew took too long to request permission to climb, or could have ascended on their own initiative earlier, said a source close to the inquiry, adding that poor weather could have played a part as well.

Relatives of passengers of the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 wait distressed at the crisis center at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia

The Indonesian captain, a former air force fighter pilot, had 6,100 flying hours under his belt and the plane last underwent maintenance in mid-November, said the airline, which is 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia . Three airline disasters involving Malaysian-affiliated carriers in less than a year have dented confidence in the country’s aviation industry and spooked travellers. Check out the Airasia flight QZ8501 announcements on Twitter timeline: #AirAsia Tweets

Family members of passengers onboard missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 react after being being told that the disappeared jet had crashed and that dead bodies are being recovered from sea. (Reuters)

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing in March on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew and has not been found. On July 17, the same airline’s Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. On board Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. The co-pilot was French.

Family members of passengers onboard missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 react after being being told that the disappeared jet had crashed and that dead bodies are being recovered from sea. (Reuters)

The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India, had not suffered a crash since its Malaysian budget operations began in 2002. AirAsia crash probe focuses on timing of request to climb, weather Investigators into the AirAsia flight which crashed into the sea off Indonesia are focusing on the timing of the crew’s request to climb to a higher altitude to avoid bad weather as a possible factor behind the tragedy, a source close to the probe said. As Indonesian ships and aircraft recovered debris and bodies from AirAsia Flight QZ8501, the investigation into what happened on Sunday, when the aircraft carrying 162 people disappeared from radars, has only just begun. Among the early lines of inquiry is whether the crew could have asked to ascend, or climbed on their own initiative in case of emergency, at an earlier stage, and what role storms in the area might have played.

Indonesian Air Force personnel carry airplane parts recovered from the water near the site where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 disappeared. Bodies and debris seen floating in Indonesian waters Tuesday, painfully ended the mystery of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea and was lost to searchers for more than two days. (AP)

“We know that the weather was very bad in this area, there was a storm,” said the official, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the press. “Why did he (the pilot) request to climb at that stage? Should he have climbed earlier? Other aircraft were flying at a higher altitude in that area. How did the two pilots react to the weather? We are asking those questions.” Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) will lead the investigation into the crash of the Airbus A320, together with representatives from the United States, France and Britain, according to the source. He said evidence such as radar data, weather reports, and the communication between the pilots and air traffic control has been gathered and is being studied. The “black box” flight recorders have yet to be located, however, and the source cautioned that it was too early to draw firm conclusions as to what went wrong. “EXTREMELY EXPERIENCED” It was not immediately clear whether Indonesia’s only pilots’ union represented the captain, Iriyanto, although it works mainly with employees of national carrier Garuda Indonesia. Calls to the union late on Tuesday went unanswered. Iriyanto, 53, spent more than 10 years as a pilot trainer before flying with airlines including Merpati Airlines, Adam Air and, for the last three years, AirAsia.

Republic of Singapore Air Force personnel survey the waters during a search and locate operation for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 plane at an undisclosed search area December 30, 2014. (Reuters)

The former fighter pilot also flew with the Indonesian Air Force, according to friends and family. AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes said it was “too early to speculate” about the cause of the crash. “I have full confidence in my … crew,” he told reporters in Surabaya. “Our pilot was extremely experienced, (with) 20,000 hours (of flying time). “He came from the air force, one of their best graduates. He came from Surabaya, so he knows the area very well.” Iriyanto’s co-pilot on the crashed jet was Remi Plesel of France.

Map comparing the AirAsia Flight Qz8501 search area to recent search and rescue efforts for aircraft that disappeared over sea.

AIR FRANCE CLUES? According to Indonesian authorities, at 6.12 a.m. on Sunday, 36 minutes after taking off from Surabaya’s Juanda Airport on a flight to Singapore, the pilot of the doomed aircraft asked for permission from Jakarta air traffic control to climb 6,000 feet to 38,000ft and deviate to the left to avoid bad weather. Two minutes later, Jakarta responded by asking QZ8501 to go left seven miles and climb to 34,000ft. There was no response from the cockpit. The aircraft was still detected by the ATC’s radar for another three minutes before disappearing at 6.18 a.m. According to flightradar24.com, a website that uses radar data to track aircraft live, other aircraft in the area were flying between 34,000 and 39,000 feet when QZ8501 disappeared. Investigators are looking at the crash of Air France flight AF447 in 2009 for possible clues to what happened on Sunday.

Members of the Search and Rescue Agency SARS carry debris recovered from the sea presumed from missing Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ 8501 at Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan, December 30, 2014. (Reuters)

The investigation into that Airbus A330 showed the co-pilot lost speed readings due to icing, and his panic reaction put the plane into a stall which the rest of the crew failed to recognise, sending the aircraft plunging into Atlantic. “No two accidents are the same. But there are similar conditions like the weather, and we must look into it very closely,” said a second source, a former air crash investigator in Indonesia. A Qantas Airways pilot with 25 years’ experience of flying in the region said pilots regularly climb to push above the cloud layer.

AirAsia Flight QZ8501: Search and rescue workers prepare to load body bags onto a flight to Kalimantan in Pangkal Pinang, Bangka December 30, 2014. (Reuters)