An Indonesia AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea in 2014 killing all on board had carried thousands of Australian passengers while flying with a mechanical fault for the 12 months before the tragedy.

Aviation experts were asked by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program to track the plane 12 months before the crash while it had the mechanical fault.

The details of the aircraft’s flight path over that period have been uncovered with disturbing questions raised about the role of Indonesia’s aviation regulator, including allegations of corruption.

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There are now calls for the Indonesian arms of AirAsia to be suspended from flying to Australia until they pass an international safety audit.

All 162 passengers and crew died when the Airbus 320 stalled at high altitude during a flight from Indonesia’s second largest city Surabaya to Singapore on December 28, 2014.

The final report into the crash, released in December last year, found the aircraft had a fault with its rudder limiter which went unfixed for 12 months before the crash.

Foreign Correspondent revealed thousands of Australians had flown on the same aircraft while it had the fault.

Perth-based aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said airlines like Qantas would never a fly a plane with that sort of defect.

“I believe there’s evidence around that some airlines that fly to Australia don’t meet international standards and they should be banned,” he said.

“It’s simply not good enough that you’ve got aeroplanes flying around with potentially catastrophic faults with them.”

The crash investigation report says the rudder limiter defect did not in itself cause the crash, but instead the flight crew’s reaction to a warning alarm about the fault was to blame.

Further, Indonesia AirAsia was not even approved to fly the route to Singapore on that day.

– ABC