Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501

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 113 of the 162 bodies.

On 20 January 2015, it was reported that 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 that the sequence of events leading to the crash started with a malfunction in the rudder travel limiter unit that eventually led to a 104-degree roll of the aircraft. The pilots' response, and apparent miscommunication between them, was a significant link in the chain of events that led to the loss of the aircraft.

Asia

Asia (ⁱ/ˈeɪʒə/ or /ˈeɪʃə/) is the Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometers, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area. It has historically been home to the world's first modern civilizations and has always hosted the bulk of the planet's human population. Asia is notable for not only overall large size and population, but unusually dense and large settlements as well as vast barely populated regions within the continent of 4.4 billion people. The boundaries of Asia are traditionally determined as that of Eurasia, as there is no significant geographical separation between Asia and Europe. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black Seas. It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean.

Flight

Flight is the process by which an object moves, through an atmosphere (the air in the case of earth) or beyond it (as in the case of spaceflight) without direct support from any surface. This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift, propulsive thrust, aerostatically using buoyancy, or by ballistic movement.

Many things fly, from natural aviators such as birds, bats and insects to human inventions such as missiles, aircraft such as airplanes, helicopters and balloons, to rockets such as spacecraft.

The engineering aspects of flight are studied in aerospace engineering which is subdivided into aeronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through the air, and astronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through space, and in ballistics, the study of the flight of projectiles.

Types of flight

Buoyant flight

Humans have managed to construct lighter than air vehicles that raise off the ground and fly, due to their buoyancy in air.

An aerostat is a system that remains aloft primarily through the use of buoyancy to give an aircraft the same overall density as air. Aerostats include free balloons, airships, and moored balloons. An aerostat's main structural component is its envelope, a lightweight skin containing a lifting gas to provide buoyancy, to which other components are attached.

Atmosphere of Earth

The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention (greenhouse effect), and reducing temperature extremes between day and night (the diurnal temperature variation).

The common name air (English pronunciation: /ɛər/) is given to the atmospheric gases used in breathing and photosynthesis. By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere. Air content and atmospheric pressure vary at different layers, and air suitable for the survival of terrestrial plants and terrestrial animals is found only in Earth's troposphere and artificial atmospheres.

The atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15×10¹⁸ kg, three quarters of which is within about 11 km (6.8 mi; 36,000 ft) of the surface. The atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The Kármán line, at 100 km (62 mi), or 1.57% of Earth's radius, is often used as the border between the atmosphere and outer space. Atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry of spacecraft at an altitude of around 120 km (75 mi). Several layers can be distinguished in the atmosphere, based on characteristics such as temperature and composition.

Indonesia AirAsia

PT. Indonesia AirAsia (operating as Indonesia AirAsia) is a low-cost airline based in Tangerang, Indonesia. It operates scheduled domestic, international services and is an Indonesian associate carrier of Malaysian low-fare airline AirAsia. Its main base is Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta. Until July 2010, Indonesia Air Asia, along with many Indonesian airlines, was banned from flying to the EU due to safety concerns. However, the ban was lifted on July 2010. Indonesia AirAsia is listed in category 1 by Indonesian Civil Aviation Authority for airline safety quality. In 2011, this 100 percent Airbus airline dominated international market in Indonesia by 41.50 percent.

History

As Awair

The airline was established as Awair (Air Wagon International) in 1999 by Abdurrahman Wahid, former chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Muslim organisation. He had a 40% stake in the airline which he relinquished after being elected president of Indonesia in October 1999. It started operations on 22 June 2000 with Airbus 300/310 aircraft, but all flights were suspended in March 2002. Awair started operating domestically within Indonesia as an associate of AirAsia in December 2004.