2014 AirAsia crash blamed on reset circuit breaker
A 2014 AirAsia plane crash resulted from a pilot resetting a circuit breaker connected to the aircraft's computer system, according to Indonesian investigators who announced their findings on Tuesday. "Someone" in the cockpit pulled out and reinserted the circuit breaker in an apparent attempt to reset the flight augmentation computer, which regulated the plane's rudder functions. The attempt caused a series of electronic failures, including disengaging autopilot and the auto-thrust of the plane, and left the pilots without control of the aircraft, The New York Times reports. Investigators discovered the cause by analyzing the plane's recovered flight data.
Flight 8501 crashed on December 28, 2014, en route to Singapore, less than an hour after taking off from Surabaya, Indonesia. The pilots were alerted by four separate alarms in the cockpit that a system controlling the airplane's rudder movement had failed. Removing and reinserting the circuit breaker is thought to have been an attempt to fix the problem. All 162 people onboard died in the crash.
The year 2014 was among the deadliest in recent aviation history. In addition to the AirAsia incident, small commercial and private plane crashes, two Malaysian Airlines crashes, an Air Algerie crash, and a TransAsia crash resulted in the loss of over 1,000 lives.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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