Indonesia’s top accident investigator said today that there are no indications of foul play in last month’s crash of an AirAsia jetliner carrying 162 people.

AirAsia Flight 8501 plunged into the Java Sea on December 28 shortly after the pilots asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic. No distress signal was received. The plane was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, to Singapore.

Members of National Search And Rescue Agency carry the airplane parts found floating in the water near the site where AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared at Kumai port in Pangkalan Bun (AP)

The investigator, from Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), added that the pilots’ voices were drowned out by the sound of the alarms.

The revelation came a day after Indonesian Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said that the plane had climbed abnormally fast before stalling and plunging into the sea, as it flew on December 28 in stormy weather from Indonesia’s Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board.

A student of Petra Christian University holds a flower near the memorial walls of their friends who were on board of the ill-fated AirAsia Flight 8501, at their campus in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. (AP)

“In the final minutes, the plane climbed at a speed which was beyond normal,” the minister told reporters.

Analysts said the AirAsia jet’s rapid ascent had echoes of the crash of an Air France jet into the Atlantic in 2009, with the loss of 228 lives.