AirAsia crash investigation: Airbus A320 plane tragedy caused by fault made

Indonesian officials revealed Tuesday that the flight that crashed into the Java Sea past year had suffered from problems with its rudder system, to which the pilots responded by resetting a circuit breaker.

The crash of the Airbus A320-200 AirAsia plane triggered a huge global search, with ships and aircraft from several nations involved in a lengthy hunt that was hampered by strong currents and bad weather.

Analysis of the plane's black boxes has now been released by Indonesia's Transport Safety Bureau, showing unresolved repetitive faults with the aircraft.

Although the investigators do not have evidence to prove their theory about how the airplane crashed, they strongly speculate that one of the pilots in the cockpit had reset the computer's circuit breaker, in a report made by The New York Times.

That caused the autopilot to disengage and resulted in the aircraft rolling to an exceedingly steep 54 degree angle of bank turn.

The main flight control computer on the Airbus A320 had a cracked joint that caused it to malfunction repeatedly, according to Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee.

It is believed that the rudder fault and the pilots' attempt to recover ended up with the plane entering into an "upset" condition or stall.

The report added the flight data recorders did not indicate the weather had affected the aircraft.

About 40 minutes after the plane left Surabaya, the pilots had asked air traffic control for approval to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet in order to avoid a storm.

The captain did not take back control as a senior pilot seated at the controls is required to do in such an emergency. "We are now carefully studying its content", a spokesman said by email, according to Reuters.

Investigators examined aircraft maintenance records and found that the intervals with the rudder system problems had become shorter in the three months before the crash.

AirAsia group CEO said on Twitter that the airline would not leave "any stone unturned" to make sure that lessons were learned from the accident.

The cause of the December 28 crash in Malaysia had long baffled experts, with some suggesting at the time there may have been an on-board explosion that caused a fire or other problem on board, leading to the crash.