What we know: The Airbus, operated by AirAsia's Indonesian affiliate, had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours in about 13,600 flights in six years. The plane's last scheduled maintenance was November 16.
Flight 8501's veteran captain, Iriyanto, 53, had 20,537 flying hours, 6,100 of them with AirAsia on the Airbus A320, the airline said. The first officer, Remi Emmanuel Plesel, 46, had 2,275 flying hours, a reasonable amount for his position.
Indonesian authorities are looking into why AirAsia was flying that particular route on that particular day, a Sunday; the country's Transport Ministry says that AirAsia was permitted to fly it only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. AirAsia said it will cooperate with the inquiry and suspended all service from Surabaya to Singapore in the meantime.
What we don't know: Did technical problems or human error have anything to do with the crash? A major aviation database registers 54 incidents involving the A320.
Some A320 accidents and incidents involve fan-cowl detachments, landing gear collapse, bird strikes and pilot error, an expert said. These cause disasters only in very rare cases.
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