A Faulty Component and the Crew's Reaction Caused AirAsia Plane Crash, Investigators Say

A faulty component played a major role in last year's AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crash which killed 162 people, Indonesian officials said on Tuesday.

Investigators have released their first public report on the disaster, which blames a string of factors as contributing to the disaster, including chronic problems with a faulty rudder system, and the way pilots tried to respond.

All passengers on board the Airbus A320 died when it went down on December 28 last year in the Java Sea, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Speaking on Tuesday, Indonesian investigators did not pinpoint a single underlying reason why flight QZ8501 disappeared from the radar, but set out a sequence spotlighting the faulty component, maintenance and crew actions.

It said stormy weather did not play a role in the accident.

Related: AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Goes Missing On the Way From Indonesia to Singapore

The crash was part of a string of aviation disasters in Southeast Asia's biggest economy, where rapid growth in air travel has overcrowded airports and stirred safety concerns.

Investigators said a system controlling rudder movement had cracked soldering that malfunctioned repeatedly, including four times during the flight and 23 times the previous year.

Officials told reporters there were indications from the black box data recorder that crew had tried to shut off power to the computer that controls the rudder system by resetting a circuit breaker, something not usually done during flight.

But they cautioned there was no proof of this.

The interruption of power to the computer caused the autopilot to disengage and removed automated protections that prevent an upset, handing manual control to the crew, they said.

"Subsequent flight crew action resulted in inability to control the aircraft… causing the aircraft [to] depart from the normal flight envelope and entering a prolonged stall condition that was beyond the ability of the flight crew to recover," the National Transportation Safety Committee said in a statement.

The airline's maintenance system was "not optimal," investigators said, adding that the airline had carried out 51 safety measures to improve conditions since the crash.

"There is much to be learned here for AirAsia, the manufacturer and the aviation industry," AirAsia parent group founder Tony Fernandes said on Twitter.

My heart and deep sorrow goes out to all the families involved in QZ8501.

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes)December 1, 2015

These are scars that are left on me forever but I remain committed to make Airasia the very best. We owe it to the families and my crew.

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes)December 1, 2015

In Europe, Airbus declined to immediately comment.

"Airbus has just received the final accident report. We are now carefully studying its content," a spokesman told Reuters by email.

The report is not intended to attribute blame but rather to make recommendations to avoid future accidents. Recommendations were addressed to the airline, Airbus and regulators.

Indonesia has seen two other major crashes in the past year, including a military cargo aircraft that went down in an urban area in northern Sumatra in July, killing more than 140 people.

Related: The Fuselage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Has Been Found in the Java Sea

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