‘No evidence of terrorism in AirAsia crash so far’

'We didn’t hear any sounds of gunfire or explosions. For the time being, based on that, we can eliminate the possibility of terrorism,' said one of the investigators.

JAKARTA // Indonesian investigators have found no evidence so far that terrorism was involved in the crash of an AirAsia passenger jet last month that killed all 162 people on board.

Andreas Hananto said on Monday 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 December 28, enroute to Singapore from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya.

When asked if there was any evidence from the recording that terrorism was involved, Mr Hananto said, “No. Because if there were terrorism, there would have been a threat of some kind.”

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.”

Indonesian authorities have said that bad weather was likely to have played a part in the disaster.

Investigators hope to finish a preliminary report on the crash early next week. The full report could take up to a year.

* Reuters