'Icing' may have triggered the Airasia crash

Weather was the "triggering factor" in the fatal crash of Airasia flight QZ8501 a week ago, with ‘Engine Icing’ most likely the cause, as plane flew into a thunderstorm over the Java sea which was infested with thunder clouds which had their tops reaching up to 50,000 feet. This happened when, the Airbus A320 en route from the Indonesian city Surabaya to Singapore, was unable to ‘climb’ over the clouds and attempted to skirt the dangerous clouds. The plane’s inadvertent entry into the clouds must have led to icing of various parts including engine.

As per report on the website of BMKG (Meteorology, Climatology & Geophysics Agency), Indonesia's meteorological agency, weather could be the triggering factor behind the accident, and the most likely weather phenomenon was icing which can cause engine damage due to cooling . This is just one possible scenario among many possibilities.

Major parts of the Airbus A320-200 were found in the sea over the week end, raising hopes that the remaining bodies and the crucial "black box" recorders would soon be located. So far 30 bodies have been found. Persistent rough sea conditions have hampered the relief process, a huge joint operation by many countries including Japan, Malaysia &USA.

AirAsia Indonesia does not seem to have followed standard operating procedures which resulted in pilots of the plane not receiving a mandatory weather report before takeoff. To make matters worse for AirAsia, it appears that the ill-fated aircraft had been flying on Sunday, a day when it was not supposed to fly, and crashed. Though, the ministry maintains that the airline did not have permission to fly on Sundays, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore confirms that from its end, the airline was permitted to fly daily on the route, adding to the confusion & drama. For the time being, airline will not be able to fly on the Surabaya-Singapore route, till its case is reviewed.

The desperate search for black boxes have turned out to be futile, as divers & rescue teams are finding it difficult to identify objects in the muddy waters, choppy sea and persistent inclement weather. However, to their credit it must be said that they have been able to locate five large objects, seemingly parts of the aircraft. In fact one of them is big enough to be the fuselage (nearly 59 feet by18 feet).

Indonesia's National Search and Rescue director of operations Mr.SB Supriyadi, has said that five ships were directed to the area where the large objects were located, with each ship having sophisticated equipment on board so that it can detect the aircraft’s black boxes. He further added, that in case divers are unable to find the black boxes, state of art equipment with capabilities of tracking underwater objects will be deployed and once located & identified, then they will be lifted up.