AirAsia QZ8501: Probe vets possible computer glitch, crew response

A police officer standing near part of the fuselage of crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 inside a storage facility at Kumai port in Pangkalan Bun, January 19, 2015. REUTERS/Beawiharta

SINGAPORE/PARIS: Investigators probing the crash of a Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 are examining maintenance records of a key part of its automated control systems, and how the pilots may have handled the plane if it failed, two people familiar with the matter said.

An outage of the twin Flight Augmentation Computers (FAC) could not have directly caused the Dec 28 crash, experts say, but without them the pilots would have had to rely on manual flying skills that are often stretched during a sudden airborne emergency.