Investigation says Rudder Problem combined with Pilot’s Response caused AirAsia Crash

The investigation into the AirAsia crash that killed all of the 162 passengers on board roughly a year ago concluded the causes of the tragic accident were due to a rudder problem combined with the pilot's actions.

Indonesian safety officials revealed on Tuesday that throughout the flight, a rudder control system had failed multiple times. Every time the system failed, an alarm would go off. In response to the alarms, the pilots attempted to reset the system, which caused a series of events that ultimately led to the plane spiraling out of control.

The miscommunication between the pilot and co-pilot did not help the situation. The report added that problems with the rudder system were quite frequent throughout December. However, despite the issues, the plane remained in use.

"The degraded performance and ambiguous commands might have decreased the SIC's (co-pilot) situational awareness and he did not react appropriately in this complex emergency resulting in the aircraft becoming upset," the report issued by the country's National Transportation Safety Committee, said.

The pilot, Captain Iriyanto, had more than 20,000 hours in the air under his belt. The co-pilot, Rémi-Emmanuel Plesel, amassed a total of 2,275 hours.

The manufacturer of the plane, Airbus, released a statement that read: "We are now carefully studying its content. With safety being top priority, Airbus is fully committed to push the safety track record of our industry even further."

Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea on Dec. 28, 2014. About 40 minutes into the journey, the flight, which departed out of Surabaya, Indonesia and was bound for Singapore, could not be located on radar screens.

"Our recommendation to AirAsia is to train their pilots flying the Airbus plane on how to make an upset recovery," investigator Nurcahyo Utomo said reported by CNN.

Utomo added that the pilots did not appear to know how to respond to the maintenance issues.

"The most interesting part that could be heard from the CVR is that whenever the plane went up, the captain said 'pull down,'" he said. "To go down, the captain has to say 'push,' while to go up, the captain has to say 'pull' in reference to moving the side stick handle."

The investigation was conducted with the help of officials from Australia, France, Malaysia and Singapore.