AirAsia Jet Climbed Too Fast, Inquiry Finds
By JOE COCHRANE

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month had climbed at excessive speeds to an unusually high altitude before plunging and disappearing from radar, Indonesia’s top transportation official said Tuesday.

Radar data showed that the Airbus A320-200 had been climbing at about 6,000 feet a minute before it crashed, killing all 162 people aboard, Ignasius Jonan, the minister of transportation, told a parliamentary commission.

“It is not normal to climb like that; it’s very rare for commercial planes, which normally climb just 1,000 to 2,000 feet per minute,” he told lawmakers, The Associated Press reported. “It can only be done by a fighter jet.”

The plane, Flight 8501, crashed on Dec. 28 less than an hour after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya, bound for Singapore. As of Tuesday, forensic experts had identified 45 of 51 victims whose bodies, or body parts, had been recovered, officials said.

Dozens of relatives of those aboard the flight wait daily in a crisis center at the East Java provincial police headquarters in Surabaya, more than three weeks after the crash.

Shortly before air traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 8501, the plane’s pilots had requested permission to increase their altitude to 38,000 feet. The plane disappeared from radar around four minutes later, Indonesian transportation officials have said.

Indonesian Navy divers last week separately recovered the aircraft’s cockpit voice and data recorders amid debris and thick mud at a depth of around 100 feet in the Java Sea, off the southern coast of Borneo Island.

The cause of the crash remains unclear, although weather has been cited as a probable factor.

Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, which is evaluating data from the plane’s black boxes, is expected to issue a preliminary report in the coming days.

Search vessels also located the plane’s fuselage last week, but surface waves as high as 16 feet and strong underwater currents have prevented Indonesian divers from reaching the wreckage to try to raise it using special inflatable balloons, said Jenny Wakana, an AirAsia spokeswoman in Surabaya.

Indonesian officials said last week that they suspected the bodies of more victims were still inside the fuselage. That would mean that forensic identification operations at the crisis center in Surabaya, which have slowed in the last few weeks, could increase after the fuselage is raised to the surface, Indonesian officials said.

失事亞航…墜海前爬升過快

印尼交通部長約南20日在國會聽證上表示，根據黑盒子的數據資料，失事的亞洲航空QZ8501班機在墜海前曾以每分鐘6000英尺的速度爬升，速度過快。

約南說，這個速度只有戰鬥機做得到，一般客機的爬升速度大約一分鐘1000至2000英尺，而客機的設計無法承受如此速度。他沒有進一步說明客機快速爬升的原因，只說過了幾秒後，飛機就失速並失控，接著墜海並從雷達上消失。

該班機的機長在失事前曾要求塔臺允許飛機從3萬2000英尺爬升到3萬8000英尺，以避開暴風雲，但因為該高度還有其他民航飛機而被拒絕。

印尼國家交通安全委員會人員烏托莫說，委員會已經下載並解讀黑盒子中一半的資料，但因為還有一半資料未知，所以現在還不能對失事原因下定論。

不過調查單位目前已將恐怖攻擊排除在可能原因之外。調查小組負責人哈多南20日說，在「座艙通話錄音器」的資料中，沒有發現任何威脅。他指出，若飛機受到恐怖攻擊，錄音氣中應有槍聲、爆炸聲或其他人的聲音等，但目前都沒發現，飛行員在失事前都在忙著操作飛機。

這架飛機失事時機上有162人，其中有7名機組員，目前搜救人員尋獲53具遺體，已完成45具身分鑑定。另外，搜救隊在爪哇海28公尺深處的海床處發現長達30公尺的機身殘骸，但因為天候不佳，海流強勁，相關人員還在想辦法打撈，相信還有部分乘客遺體在該殘骸內。

印尼總統佐科威14日向投入搜救的所有人員表示感謝，並表示即使聯合搜救行動結束，印尼搜救隊伍也不能放棄搜尋罹難者遺體，他下令相關人員無限期搜尋乘客遺體。

印尼當局預計本月28日公布客機失事調查的初步結果，但表示最終的報告至少需要一年才能完成。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/world/asia/airasia-jets-climb-before-crash-was-unusually-fast-investigators-say.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20150121/c21plane/zh-hant/

2015-01-21．聯合晚報．A5．國際焦點．編譯徐偉真