JAKARTA, Indonesia—The AirAsia jet that crashed on Dec. 28 into the Java Sea stalled after apparently climbing far too steeply, Indonesia’s Transport minister said Tuesday, in the first public comments by a high-level official on what likely happened.

“The plane may have climbed in the last minutes at a speed beyond normal limits. After that, it stalled. Why did it stall? I don’t know,” Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said, elaborating on an statement he made earlier in a hearing in the parliament. (Update: AirAsia Crash...