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Jakarta – The pilots of the AirAsia plane that crashed off Indonesia last month switched off a computer system shortly before the accident, a news report said yesterday.Pilots first attempted to deal with alerts coming from the flight augmentation computers before shutting the computers down, a report said, citing two unnamed people with knowledge of the investigation.

The computers normally control the plane’s rudder and also prevent it from losing too much airspeed, among other functions.
Flight QZ8501 was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on December 28, when it climbed abnormally fast, stalled and crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 162 people on board.

Disabling the computer explains how the pilots were able to attempt the dangerous climb, but not why they might want to, the report said.

Investigators on Thursday said the Airbus A320 was being flown by the co-pilot, a French national with 2,275 flying hours, while the Indonesian captain, who had 20,537 flying hours, 6,100 of them logged with the airline, was monitoring.

The cockpit voice recorder indicated that the co-pilot was at the helm since take-off, a common practice, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, the chief investigator at the national transport safety committee. – Sapa