Indonesian AirAsia flight in steep climb before crash

JAKARTA

The AirAsia flight that crashed last month, killing all 162 people on board, was climbing at a rate more common to fighter jets before it disappeared, Indonesia’s transport minister said Tuesday.

Ignasius Jonan told a parliamentary hearing that Flight QZ8501, which disappeared from radar on Dec. 28, was gaining altitude at a rate of around 6,000 feet a minute.

"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 said. "It can only be done by a fighter jet."

Jonan said the steep climb occurred “during the last minutes” before the Airbus A320-200 stalled.

In 2009, an Air France Airbus crashed into the Atlantic Ocean when it stalled after a steep climb.

Jonan was briefing a House of Representatives commission on information gleaned from radar readings.

The last contact with air traffic controllers was when the pilot asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid storm clouds. The flight was denied immediate permission to climb due to heavy air traffic in the area and four minutes later the plane disappeared.

Search and rescue teams have located at least nine big objects, including the aircraft's fuselage and tail, in the Java Sea off the coast of Borneo.

The plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been recovered but are still being analyzed. An initial examination of the voice recorder has found no indication that terrorism caused the crash.

The plane was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore when it went missing.

Only 53 bodies have been recovered so far as rough sea conditions have prevented divers from reaching the wreckage. The majority of the remaining bodies are expected to be found in the fuselage.

Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee is due to release a preliminary report on Jan. 28.