AirAsia flight has parallels with 2009 French jet crash into ocean

The jet dropped from the sky swiftly, without a mayday call, and was quickly swallowed up by the waves.

It took nearly two years to find the black boxes from Air France Flight AF447, but the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight that fell into the Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of June 1, 2009, could offer insight into what may have gone wrong on AirAsia's Flight QZ8501.

Both flights killed everyone on board, both were flying into storms and - in both cases - it seemed to the pilots of the Airbus that a climb was the way out of their predicament.

In the Air France flight, several factors converged to bring the plane down: the three pilots of the Airbus A330 were confused by faulty air-speed data after key sensors iced over.

Then, about 25 minutes into turbulence, the autopilot and autothrust cut out, and the pilot at the controls began a steep climb, despite requests from the co-pilot to descend.

The captain, who had been away from the cockpit, returned about 90 seconds after the first stall warnings sounded. Four minutes and 23 seconds after the first alarms sowed panic and confusion over how to regain control of the aircraft, the plane slammed into the ocean. The wreckage was found 3,900 metres beneath the ocean, its black boxes intact.