CRASH REPORT: Transportation Safety Board head Tatang Kurniadi with the investigation report on the 2007 New Year's Day crash. The pilots were trying to fix a fault in the navigation system and did not realise the autopilot had been disconnected. -- PHOTO: AP

'This is really bad. It is starting to fly like a bamboo ship. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up!' screamed one.

The other yelled: 'Crazy, this is crazy.'

Their last recorded words, captured by the cockpit voice recorder, were released yesterday by investigators who blamed errors by the two pilots and a faulty navigation system for the crash on New Year's Day last year.

Investigators found that the pilots had accidentally disconnected the autopilot system while trying to fix a problem in the navigation instruments.

'Without the autopilot, the plane went out of control, listing to the right and pitching down,' investigator Santoso Sayogo told a press conference yesterday.

Airline dogged by string of accidents THE 102-death tragedy on New Year's Day last year was the worst of a series of mishaps to hit the Indonesian budget airline Adam Air. In 2006, one of its planes was lost for several hours, eventually landing many kilometres from its intended destination. ... more Adam Air had registered 154 defects in the Boeing's navigation system in the three months before the crash, showing that the plane was poorly maintained.

The plane was flying from Java to an airport in the east of Indonesia when it spiralled from the sky at a height of 10,000m. It took around two minutes to hit the sea, investigators said.

Several days passed before fishermen and navy boats located floating wreckage off the island of Sulawesi. Both flight data recorders were eventually found on the sea bed. The plane's mostly intact fuselage remains under water.

No bodies were recovered.

Transport Minister Jusman Syafei Djamal said Adam Air had registered 154 defects in the Boeing 737-400's navigation system in the three months before the crash, showing that the plane was poorly maintained.

Indonesia's transport safety chief Tatang Kurniadi said: 'The accident happened because of a combination of several factors, including the failure of both pilots to intensively monitor flight instruments, especially in the last two minutes of the flight.'

The pilots had reported the navigation system problem but sounded unconcerned, even joking just 20 minutes before the plane went down.

Later, as they tried to fix the problem, the autopilot disengaged, causing the plane to bank to the right.

The pilots were apparently unaware that they were now flying the plane and ignored 'a number of initial alerts, warnings and changes to displays' indicating the jetliner's increasingly critical situation, the National Transportation Safety Committee report said.

They were so preoccupied with the repair work they were attempting that they did not act to stop the plane's descent and prevent it from going out of control.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE