It was recently learned that Indonesia’s National Safety Transportation (NTSC) – an entity with a checkered history that includes covering up pilot mass murder / suicide – determined that the more experienced Indonesian pilot was not at the controls when Air Asia Flight QZ8501 crashed on December 28th. Instead, it was the far less experienced French pilot. As a result, France is now jumping into the investigation.
According to aviation experts Shoebat.com spoke with, the gap in flight hour experience is not as significant as it may seem. However, a consequence of the French national being at the controls may have added a new dynamic to the investigation. A French judge will reportedly be entering the fray, which could lead to siloed investigations that yield different results.
QZ8501 Co-pilot Remi Emmanuel Plesel,
According to one report, the investigation involves manslaughter:
The co-pilot, Remi Emmanuel Plesel, with 2,247 hours of flying experience, was at the controls and talking to controllers while the captain, Iriyanto, who had 20,537 hours, was monitoring, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, the lead investigator of the crash. The account was the first description of the flight’s last moments.
The investigators didn’t address whether pilots had cut power to the flight augmentation computer system and said they wouldn’t release more information on the case.
Meanwhile, a judge in France will investigate possible “manslaughter” in connection with the crash.
ABC News reported that as the plane was encountering trouble, the pilot left his seat.
The captain of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the sea in December was out of his seat conducting an unorthodox procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control, two people familiar with the investigation say.
According to reports by the Reuters news agency, the two sources said by the time the captain returned to the controls of flight QZ8501 it was too late to save the plane.
The experts Shoebat.com consulted with concede that while Iriyanto’s decision to leave his seat in order to shut off a computer system – if that’s indeed why Iriyanto did so – may be unorthodox, it also may have been necessary, and not sabotage. The Airbus is so computer-reliant that it can almost take on a mind of its own and that in certain situations, actions it takes to correct any problems could actually put the plane in more danger. Of course, the problem with disabling one computer system on the plane is that because the systems are so integrated, there can be a domino effect leading to additional problems.
Captain Iriyanto: Left his seat as plane encountered trouble.
As many have moved on from the news about the crash of Air Asia Flight QZ8501, these developments should be monitored very closely as the entity charged with investigating the crash has a history that includes a chairman who intentionally covered up the determined cause of Silk Air Flight 185 in 1997, as Shoebat.com has reported.
Investigators are having a tough time explaining why the pilot(s) would have shut off a major computer system:
The pilots of AirAsia flight QZ8501 cut power to a critical computer system that normally prevents planes from going out of control shortly before it plunged into the Java Sea, two people with knowledge of the investigation said.
The development comes as France opened a formal criminal investigation after it was found the French co-pilot was at the controls.
The action appears to have helped trigger the events of December 28, when the Airbus climbed so abruptly it lost lift and it began falling with warnings blaring in the cockpit, the two said. All 162 aboard were killed and only 72 bodies have so far been recovered.
Three yeas after the 1997 crash of Silk Air Flight 185, Indonesia’s NTSC released its controversial report. Lower level investigators determined conclusively that the plane was intentionally crashed by the pilot. However, NTSC Chairman Oetarjo Diran, a Muslim, covered up that conclusion and overrode its findings, officially concluding that the cause could not be determined. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the U.S. was so outraged by the findings that it issued a public rebuke of the Chairman’s findings, as Shoebat.com reported:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5DfZJ_tKYI&t=42m40s