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Tail of crashed AirAsia flight found

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Search teams locate the tail of crashed flight QZ8501, marking a major step in locating the plane’s black boxes.

AirAsia's logo, an upside down "A", was seen on a piece of metal at the site in the Java sea [AP]

AirAsia’s logo, an upside down “A”, was seen on a piece of metal at the site in the Java sea [AP]

by Al Jazeera

The tail of AirAsia flight QZ8501 has been found, potentially marking a major step towards locating the plane’s black boxes and helping shed light on what caused it to crash into the sea 11 days ago.

Search teams located the tail of the passenger jet in the Java Sea on Wednesday, on which the company’s logo, an upside down “A” could be seen.

“We’ve found the tail that has been our main target today,” the head of the search and rescue agency, Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, told a news conference in Jakarta.

The tail had been identified using an underwater remote operated vehicle, Soelistyo said, adding that the team “now is still desperately trying to locate the black box”.

Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, said improvements on Wednesday in weather and visibility played a key role in locating the crash site.

Locating the tail has been a priority because the cockpit voice and flight data recorders, crucial for investigators trying to establish why the plane crashed, are located in the rear section of the Airbus A320-200.

“If right part of tail section, then the black box should be there… We need to find all parts soon so we can find all our guests to ease the pain of our families. That still is our priority,” AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes wrote on Twitter after the announcement.

Dark and shallow waters at the site have made it difficult for divers to retrieve the wreckage age, Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, told the Associated Press news agency.

Despite a huge recovery operation assisted by several countries, progress has been hampered by strong winds and high waves.

So far only 40 bodies have been found, all of them floating on the sea.

The flight went down December 28, halfway through a two-hour flight between Indonesia’s second-largest city of Indonesia and Singapore, killing all 162 people on board.

It is not clear what caused the crash, but bad weather is believed to be a contributing factor.

The search team is trying to locate the black box [AP]

AirAsia flight QZ8501: how cloud computing could help prevent air disasters

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AirAsia flight QZ8501 is the third flight from a Malaysian carrier to be lost in 2014. EPA/Barbara Walton

AirAsia flight QZ8501 is the third flight from a Malaysian carrier to be lost in 2014. EPA/Barbara Walton

by Yijun Yu, The Conversation

While the full picture has yet to emerge, it appears that the reason for the loss of Air Asia flight QZ8501 is different from the losses of MH370 and MH17 earlier this year. MH17 was clearly a man-made disaster, QZ8501 appears to be weather-related. MH370 remains a mystery.

Even though cloud-computing could help advance the status of the black box in terms of the investigation after such incidents, as we are only too aware, nature – in the form of bad weather – often plays a significant role in airline disasters. Is there anything we can do, on the ground, to lower the risk of these weather-related incidents?

Recently, Microsoft Research illustrated that combining real-time data from nearby flights, it is possible to predict the wind speed to an accuracy ten times better than the weather simulations by supercomputers. Augmenting the data collected from real-time sensors from the cloud, one can create a better simulation, thanks to the advances in the internet of flying things.

The internet of flying things refers to the technology which is ready for adoption by agencies on the ground who want to get a bird’s-eye view of weather conditions. The basic technology is already available for less than £500: equipping a drone or unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) with a GoPro quality camera, enthusiastic fans can already survey the neighbourhood from the air.

If we look at the air crash incidents caused by bad weather conditions, can the killer technology of cloud computing and augmented reality be used as a life saver?

Is it cyclical reasoning to want to use this sort of cloud computing technology to tell us something that the pilots of a stricken aircraft can already tell from the flight deck? After all, when you fly into such wind speeds, is it not difficult to change one’s actions accordingly? Isn’t the flight simply doomed? Not necessarily. In this case, had nearby flying objects logged the abnormal wind speeds earlier they would have been able to notify air traffic control in time to issue a warning to flight QZ8501. In these situations, often timely interventions can save lives.

Internet of flying objects

But before this idea can practically be realised, there are at least three obstacles to overcome if we want to harness the power of the internet of flying objects.

The first thing to note is that these flying objects shouldn’t be limited to aircraft – we could be talking about weather balloons, drones – anything in the air, in short, but these objects need to be identifiable. Only though identification can messages from these flying objects be recognised and trusted by authorities such as FAA. So, for example, the drones which – it is imagined – will be carrying goods to households (not to mention the many thousands of privately owned drones which have been so popular as presents this Christmas) must be regulated and their call signs logged by the authorities before they can be of any practical help. At present they are not. In other words, the autonomous flying objects are required to collaborate with air traffic controllers if we want to build a picture that will deliver a secure and trustworthy solution.

In addition, these regulated and registered flying objects need to be effectively networked, so that – through the exchange of real-time data – the crowd-sourced information delivers as accurate a picture as possible. Resolving any conflicts arising from information coming in from multiple sources requires a good computational model that can assign appropriate weight to the various sources of information.

And this aggregated data needs to depict a physical truth to decision makers – whether they are in front of the desk in the air traffic control centre, on the flight deck of a nearby aircraft or in command of the rescue team. The task of verifying available evidence against any possible internal flaws or external tampering would require that network security levels are brought to another level.

These three requirements are basic, but if they can be overcome, they might offer us a better opportunity to use today’s technology to provide safer air transport in the future.

Yijun Yu is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Computing and Communications at The Open University.

The Conversation

Missing AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 likely 'at bottom of sea'

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As ships and planes search Indonesian waters, official says jet carrying 162 people is presumed crashed at sea.

Relatives of the passengers of AirAsia flight QZ8501 comfort each other at Juanda International Airport.

Relatives of the passengers of AirAsia flight QZ8501 comfort each other at Juanda International Airport.

by Al Jazeera

The AirAsia plane that went missing with 162 people on board after takeoff from Indonesia is likely at the bottom of the sea, Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency chief said as aircraft and ships were dispatched to search for the jet.

“Based on the coordinates given to us and evaluation that the estimated crash position is in the sea, the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea,” Bambang Soelistyo told reporters on Monday.

“That’s the preliminary suspicion and it can develop based on the evaluation of the result of our search.”

First Admiral Sigit Setiayana, the Naval Aviation Center Commander at the Surabaya air force base, said that 12 navy ships, five planes, three helicopters and a number of warships were searching an area of east and southeast of Indonesia’s Belitung island and nearby waters.

Malaysia, Singapore and Australia have joined the operation.

The Airbus A320-200 went missing after air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft about 45 minutes after it left Juanda international airport at Surabaya in East Java at 5:20am on Sunday (22:20 GMT Saturday).

Shortly before disappearing, AirAsia said pilots of the plane had asked permission from Jakarta air traffic control to change course and climb above bad weather in an area noted for severe thunderstorms.

Investigation ongoing

Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler, reporting from Surabaya, said investigators were checking all passenger profiles and footage of X-rays of the luggage taken on board, as well as looking into the maintenance of the plane.

“There are also reports that some fishermen might have heard something before the news that the plane had disappeared off radar came out,” he said.

The airline said 155 of those on board Flight QZ8501 were Indonesians, with three South Koreans and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and France.

Steven Wallace, a former accident investigator for the US Federal Aviation Authority, told Al Jazeera he was confident that the plane would be found..

“Typically airplanes break up and light interior components, sometimes even pieces like the tail, float to the surface,” he told Al Jazeera.

“And if the recorder is under water, it will emit a ping. For at least 30 our up to 90 days it will send out a signal to help investigators locate the wreckage.”

The aircraft was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysian-based AirAsia which dominates Southeast Asia’s booming low-cost airline market.

Disastrous year for Malaysian aviation

AirAsia said the missing jet last underwent maintenance on November 16. The company has never suffered a fatal accident.

An official from Indonesia’s Transport Ministry said the pilot asked to ascend by 6,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid heavy clouds.

“The plane is in good condition but the weather is not so good,” Djoko Murjatmodjo told a press conference at Jakarta’s airport, addressing reports of severe storms in the area where the jet went missing.

Climbing to dodge large rain clouds is a standard procedure for aircraft in these conditions.

The plane’s disappearance comes at the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian aviation.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, vanished in March after inexplicably diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing course. No trace of it has been found.

Another Malaysia Airlines plane went down in July in rebellion-torn eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard. It was believed to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile.

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