Terrorism has been a major story over the last few weeks. Between the massacre at Charlie Hebdo's French office, the blood bath at the Parisian market and the terror sweeps in Belgium, it is clearly a frightening topic that is on everyone's mind. Thankfully, terrorism appears to not have contributed to the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501 into the Java Sea a few weeks ago.
Divers discovered the black boxes last week and have begun to evaluate the information they contain. According to Indonesian officials, they believe they can safely say that terrorism was not a factor that contributed to the loss of 163 lives on board the aircraft.
When asked if there was any evidence from the recording that terrorism was involved, Andreas Hananto said, "No. Because if there were terrorism, there would have been a threat of some kind. In that critical situation, the recording indicates that the pilot was busy with the handling of the plane."
Investigators said they had listened to the whole of the recording but transcribed only about half of it.
"We didn't hear any voice of other persons other than the pilots," said Nurcahyo Utomo, another investigator.
"We didn't hear any sounds of gunfire or explosions. For the time being, based on that, we can eliminate the possibility of terrorism," he said.
Family and friends of those on board the doomed flight must be somewhat relieved to know that it did not meet with any type of foul play and that it likely was weather that directly contributed to the plane crash, but there are still issues here.
It does not change the fact that AirAsia did not have permission to fly a Sunday run from Surabaya to Singapore. If it had followed the instructions that were legally laid out, then Flight 8501 would never have been in the air in the first place.
