• AirAsia Flight 8501's Pilot Was Out of His Seat When Doomed Plane Lost Control

    It has been almost two weeks since the black boxes for AirAsia Flight 8501 have been recovered and investigators are working hard to not only determine the cause of the crash, but also to piece together those last few minutes of the ill-fated flight. Flight 8501 plunged into the Java Sea on December 28 killing all 162 on board. Bad weather is believed to have played a significant part in the crash but now it's also looking like a mechanical problem may have even complicated things more.

  • Indonesian Officials: AirAsia Plane Climbed Too Fast, Likely Stalled Out

    About a week after finding and recovering the black boxes from AirAsia Flight 8501, investigators are beginning to put together a solid idea of what led to the demise of the plane. It had been reported almost immediately after the flight went missing that storms in the area and bad weather conditions had prompted the pilot to ask to climb from 32,000 feet up to 38,000 feet but was initially denied. Indonesian officials are now saying that the pilot did climb 6,000 feet in just one minute, and that likely caused the airbus to stall out.

  • Investigators Believe Terrorism Wasn't a Factor in Crash of AirAsia Flight 8501

    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.

  • Divers Find Black Boxes from AirAsia Flight 8501

    Investigators in charge of finding out what caused the demise of AirAsia Flight 8501 a little more than two weeks ago have just retrieved a major piece to the puzzle. On Monday, Jan. 12, divers recovered the flight data recorder from beneath a wing at the bottom of the Java Sea. They also have located the cockpit voice recorder about 105 feet below the water, buried beneath wreckage. Divers are reportedly working to free that second black box from beneath heavy wreckage. Flight 8501 left Surabaya for Singapore two Sundays ago only to find itself caught in horrible weather. The pilot had asked for permission to climb to a higher altitude and, by the time that permission was granted a few minutes later, all contact had already been lost with the craft. Indonesian officials have speculated that icing may have built up, causing the engine to stall out and leading to the plane plummeting into the sea. Everything at this point is sheer speculation, but two things are certain, though. There were six other planes flying in exactly the same storm as Flight 8501 and they made it safely to their destinations, so this flight should not have even been in the air. AirAsia is permitted to run the Surabaya-to-Singapore route four days a week, and Sunday is not one of those days, so if they had been following their legal guidelines this plane would never have been in the air, let alone lost. Investigators are hopeful that they will get answers about what happened from these boxes.

  • Tail Has Been Found for Missing AirAsia Plane

    Finally, conditions for the search and recovery of lost AirAsia Flight 8501 have improved enough for divers to spot the tail of the plane. It has been located about 20 miles from the craft's last known location and resting at the bottom of the Java Sea. This is particularly promising news because if it is the right side of the tail, then the black box will likely be recovered with it. That recovery is crucial in helping investigators understand exactly what happened in the final moments of the doomed flight. "We've found the tail that has been our main target," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the search and rescue agency, said at a news conference in Jakarta. The tail was identified by divers after it was spotted by an underwater machine using a sonar scan, Soelistyo said. He displayed underwater photographs showing partial lettering on the sunken object compared with a picture of an intact Airbus A320-200 in AirAsia livery. "I can confirm that what we found was the tail part from the pictures," he said, adding that the team "now is still desperately trying to locate the black box," according to a report by Reuters. So far, monsoon-like rain and minimal visibility has made recovering the bodies of the 162 passengers on board difficult, and divers have been frustrated to know that they are so close yet have not been able to fully do their job.

  • Icy Conditions May Have Damaged AirAsia Flight 8501's Engine, Causing Crash

    As pieces of AirAsia Flight 8501 are slowly being recovered from the bottom of the Java Sea, investigators are beginning to put together an idea of what may have happened to the lost plane. We have already learned that the weather, quite obviously, played a big role in the demise of this craft, and while some question whether or not it should have even been flying, there were six other planes nearby that safely navigated through similar conditions. That seems to indicate that perhaps Flight 8501 had another issue, and an Indonesian government agency is the first to publicly lean that way. According to the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics, also known as BMKG, icing may have damaged the plane's engine, ultimately causing it to stall out and then crash to the sea below it. As it stands now, actually recovering bodies and wreckage has been a difficult task because of driving, monsoon-like rains and 12-foot waves in the search area. Searchers are finding what they need to, but it has been a slower process than officials would like. We also learned this past weekend that Flight 8501 never should have been in the air on Sunday morning. AirAsia is permitted to run the Surabaya-Singapore route four days a week each week, but Sunday is not an approved day. The carrier is now being investigated because of this and could ultimately be grounded for breaking this rule. The flight's black box, which contains the cockpit voice recorder as well as the flight data recorder, has yet to be discovered.

  • AirAsia was Not Permitted to Fly Surabaya-to-Singapore Route on Day of Crash

    As if a lost plane and over 120 missing passengers that have yet to be recovered isn't enough for AirAsia to have to handle, we're learning that the carrier could ultimately find itself in a lot of trouble or even have operations completely shuttered. The problem is that legally, AirAsia Indonesia didn't have permission to fly the Surabaya-to-Singapore route on the Sunday morning that Flight 8501 ultimately crashed into the Java Sea killing all on board.

  • AirAsia Plane May Have Made a Successful Water Landing

    While what happened to AirAsia Flight 8501 in its final minutes remains an official mystery, various theories are being pieced together and considered. One such notion is that the pilot may have actually made a successful water landing on the Java Sea, only to sink before passengers could be safely removed from the plane.

  • Fox News Ranked Top Cable News Network for 13th Year in a Row

    The end of the year means the television networks take a look back on the previous 12 months and analyze those numbers. Apparently, when it comes to news, Fox News not only crushed its competition, but this is actually the 13th year in a row that it is America's top cable news network. According to a report by Deadline, Fox News is doing great among all the cable networks as well. As 2014 ends, FNC celebrates its 13th consecutive year as the most-watched cable news network, though it, too, has had its disappointments. Overall, FNC is down 4 percent in total viewers — 1.05 million — the same percent in news demo viewers, though it finished laps ahead of its competition in both metrics, Deadline said. FNC rings out the year ranked No. 4 among ad-supported, basic-cable networks in overall primetime audiences, behind ESPN, USA Network and TNT. It also ranks No. 4 in total. CNN and MSNBC are way back in the 20s and 30s, said Deadline.

  • Bodies, Debris Recovered from AirAsia Flight 8501 Crash Site

    Families of the 162 passengers aboard AirAsia Flight 8501 are grieving this morning, as it has been confirmed that the wreckage has been found in the ocean about 6 miles from the Airbus's last-known location. About halfway into the two-hour flight, the crew encountered extremely bad weather early Sunday morning, Dec. 28, and when Capt. Iriyanto requested permission to climb to a higher altitude, he was denied. Two minutes later, the controller told him that it was safe to proceed to 38,000 feet, but got no response. Loved ones held out hope for more than two days, only to have the worst confirmed early this morning, Dec. 30. AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes has attempted to handle this tragedy with great care and has been nothing but supportive and empathetic toward the families who were waiting for official word. Today, Fernandes tweeted, "My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501. On behalf of AirAsia my condolences to all. Words cannot express how sorry I am." He has since flown back to Surabaya to be with the grieving families. He also has chartered a flight to take them out to the airspace over the Java Sea to say their final goodbyes to loved ones in the area where they lost their lives.

  • Investigators Believe AirAsia Flight 8501 'At the Bottom of the Sea'

    For a little while, it seemed like debris from AirAsia's Flight 8501 might have been spotted floating in the Java Sea, but that possibility has now been dismissed. The work horse flight disappeared from radar more than 36 hours ago after asking to alter its course due to bad weather. A few minutes later the Airbus 320-200 disappeared from radar and has not been seen or heard from since. Unfortunately, as time goes on, officials have seen less reason to believe that the outcome of this situation will be anything less than grim. Indonesia's search and rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo has admitted that, "Based on the coordinates that we know, the evaluation would be that any estimated crash position is in the sea, and that the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea." That is obviously not the reality the families of the 162 people on board Flight 8501 want to believe. Their loved ones departed Surabaya, Indonesia, Sunday morning, Dec. 28, headed for Singapore, a trip that usually takes about two hours. The plane instead vanished amid thick storm clouds and thunderstorms that made travel conditions difficult.
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