Zero Hours - Air Asia Flight 8501 Disaster over Indonesia

Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 (QZ8501/AWQ8501) was a scheduled international passenger flight, operated by AirAsia Group affiliate Indonesia AirAsia, from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. On 28 December 2014, the aircraft operating the route, an Airbus A320-216, registered as PK-AXC, msn: 3648, crashed into the Java Sea during bad weather, killing all 155 passengers and seven crew on board. Two days after the crash, debris from the aircraft and human remains were found floating in the Java Sea. Searchers located wreckage on the sea floor beginning on 3 January 2015, and the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were recovered by 13 January. The search for bodies ended in March 2015 after recovery of 106 of the 162 bodies. The aircraft had stalled during an abnormally steep climb and had been unable to recover. On 1 December 2015, the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee released its report concluding[8] that the sequence of events leading to the crash started with a malfunction in the rudder travel limiter unit. The pilots' response led to a 104-degree roll of the aircraft, and apparent miscommunication between them was a significant link in the chain of events that led to the loss of the aircraft. The air crash became the second-deadliest in Indonesian territory, behind Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 in 1997 and the first fatal crash involving an AirAsia group aircraft. It was also the second deadliest plane crash involving an Airbus A320 and the third deadliest involving an Airbus A320 family. It was the third deadliest plane crash in 2014.