National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) senior investigator denied a rumor saying that AirAsia QZ8501 pilot Capt. Irianto left the cockpit before the plane plunged to Java sea.
“[The rumor is] outrageous. There’s no such thing,” he said on Saturday.
Earlier, an anonymous source told Reuters that the pilot of the plane had left his seat to reset the flight augmentation computer (FAC) before the airplane lost control. Reuters also reported that Capt. Irianto left his seat to cut power by pulling the circuit breaker. Despite the action was not the main cause of the accident, it shut down the automatic protection system.
Still according to Reuters, when Capt. Irianto went to cut the power, the plane was controlled manually by French copilot Remi Plesel. The report mentioned that when Capt. Irianto returned to the cockpit to take over the control, it was already too late.
KNKT air subcommittee chief Masruri called on all interested party to stop criminalizing the tragic accident. To this date, Masruri said, the KNKT has yet found any indication of crime in this accident.
“If there’s any [crime], we would report it to the Police, and nobody needs to tell us,” he said.
British media The Telegraph reported that a French judge will investigate the possibility of “manslaughter” in connection with AirAsia’s QZ8501 crash since the plane was controlled by a French national in the last minutes of the crash.
Source: Tempo