'No sabotage' in Airasia crash

Indonesia’s top accident investigator says there are no indications of foul play in last month’s crash of an AirAsia jetliner with 162 people on board.

National Transportation Safety Committee head Tatang Kurniadi said today that an analysis of the Airbus A320’s cockpit voice recorder shows no signs of sabotage or terrorism.

AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea on December 28 shortly after the pilots asked to climb from 32,000ft to 38,000ft to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic.

No distress signal was received.

Mr Kurniadi told reporters that the contents of the plane’s two black boxes have been downloaded and are being analysed together with advisers from Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer.

He said a preliminary report is expected next week.