The captain of the AirAsia plane that drowned into the sea in December was out of his seat handling an unusual procedure when his co-pilot seemingly lost control, and by the time he came back it was too late to rescue the jet, two people familiar with the examination told. Facts coming out of the ultimate moments of Flight QZ8501 are probably to highlight attention partly on maintenance, procedures and training, although Indonesian authorities have emphasized publicly that it is too early to draw any strong conclusions.

It had been experiencing maintenance faults with a main flight control computer for above a week, and one person known with the issue told the captain had flown on the similar plane with the intermittently faulty device only days before the crash.