JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian investigators said Thursday that the co-pilot of AirAsia Flight 8501 was at the controls when the plane made its final radio transmission to ground control before plunging minutes later into the Java Sea, killing all 162 people aboard.
The investigators, who have just completed a preliminary report on the crash based on the plane’s so-called black boxes, told journalists that the captain was “monitoring the flight” on Dec. 28 from his place in the cockpit’s left seat.
The Airbus A320-200, flying at 32,000 feet, rapidly ascended an additional 5,000 feet in just 30 seconds — extremely unusual for a commercial aircraft — and then fell into the sea, said Ertata Lananggalih, senior air safety investigator for Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee.
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On Tuesday, Indonesia’s armed forces halted search operations for victims and abandoned further attempts to raise the aircraft’s heavily damaged fuselage, which is lying off the southern coast of Borneo Island at a depth of around 100 feet.
The country’s civilian National Search and Rescue Agency said on Tuesday that it would continue searching for victims until Feb. 6, but at a decreased tempo, given that the military, including navy divers, had conducted the bulk of the operations.
