Indonesia will not make public full preliminary AirAsia crash

A woman stand in front of an AirAsia check-in machine at Soekarno Hatta airport in Jakarta, January 21, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

JAKARTA - Indonesian investigators may release some initial findings next week into last month's crash of an AirAsia passenger jet that killed 162 people, but the full preliminary report will not be made public, a government official said on Wednesday.

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.

Data from radar and the aircraft's two "black box" flight recorders is providing investigators with a clearer picture of what occurred during the final minutes of Flight QZ8501.

Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan on Tuesday told a parliamentary hearing that the plane had climbed faster than normal in its final minutes, and then stalled.

Three days after the crash a source familiar with initial investigations had told Reuters the plane appeared to have made an "unbelievably steep climb" that may have pushed it beyond its performance envelope.

Investigators are expected to submit a preliminary report to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) early next week, in line with ICAO regulations that the preliminary report must be filed within 30 days of the date of the accident.

"One month after the accident we will just make a preliminary report. No comment and no analysis," Tatang Kurniadi, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Committee, told reporters.

"This will not be exposed to the public. This is for the consumption of those countries that are involved."

The NTSC will hold a press conference on the AirAsia crash next Wednesday, but it was not clear how much will be disclosed.

The final report of the crash investigation findings, which will be made public, must be filed within a year.