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 Andreas Hananto told Reuters that his team of 10 investigators at
the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) had found "no
threats" in the cockpit voice recordings to indicate foul play
during AirAsia Flight QZ8501.
The Airbus A320-200 vanished from radar screens on Dec. 28, less
than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest
city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors.
When asked if there was any evidence from the recording that
terrorism was involved, 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.
 "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."
EXPLOSION ALSO "UNLIKELY"
Utomo said that investigators could hear "almost everything" on the
recording contained in one of the flight's two "black boxes". The
other is the flight data recorder, and both have been recovered from
the wreckage at the bottom of the Java Sea.
He declined to give details about what was said during the doomed
flight's final moments, citing Indonesian law.
Indonesian authorities have said that bad weather was likely to have
played a part in the disaster.
According to Hananto, evidence also showed that an explosion was
unlikely before the plane crashed, disputing a theory suggested by
an official from the National Search and Rescue Agency last week.
"From the (flight data recordings) so far, it's unlikely there was
an explosion," Hananto said. "If there was, we would definitely know
because certain parameters would show it. There are something like
1,200 parameters."
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The final minutes of the AirAsia flight were full of "sounds of
machines and sounds of warnings" that must be filtered out to get a
complete transcript of what was said in the cockpit, said Hananto,
who has been an air safety investigator since 2009.
The first half of the two-hour long cockpit voice recording has been
transcribed. That includes audio from the previous flight and the
beginning of Flight QZ8501, which crashed around 40 minutes after
takeoff.
The team, which is working with French, Singaporean and Chinese air
safety investigators, hopes to finish transcribing the recording
this week, Hananto said.
With seven computers and various audio equipment, the small NTSC
laboratory dedicated to the AirAsia investigation is split into two
rooms; one for the cockpit voice recorder and the other for the
flight data recorder.
Analysis of the flight data recorder would take longer, Hananto
said, because investigators were examining all 72 previous flights
flown by the aircraft.
Investigators hope to finish a preliminary report on the crash early
next week. The full report could take up to a year, but will not
include the entire cockpit voice transcript.
"In Indonesia it remains undisclosed," said Tatang Kurniadi, chief
of the NTSC. "Just some important highlights will be included in the
report."
(Editing by Mike Collett-White)
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