Pilots struggled through flight manual trying to save plane

PARIS: The pilots of a doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX scoured a handbook as they struggled to understand why the jet was lurching downwards, but ran out of time before it hit the water, people with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder contents said yesterday.

It is the first time the voice recorder contents from the Lion Air flight have been made public, albeit anonymously.

The captain was at the controls of Lion Air flight JT610 when the nearly new jet took off from Jakarta, and the first officer was handling the radio, according to a preliminary report issued in November.

Just two minutes into the flight, the first officer reported a ‘‘flight control problem’’ to air traffic control, the November report said.

The captain asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook, which contains checklists for abnormal events, the first source said.

For the next nine minutes, the jet warned pilots it was in a stall and pushed the nose down in response, the report showed.

The captain fought to climb, but the computer, still incorrectly sensing a stall, continued to push the nose down using the plane’s trim system.

The manufacturer has said a different crew on the same plane the evening before encountered the same problem but solved it after running through three checklists, according to the November report. But they did not pass on all of the information about the problems they encountered to the next crew, the report said.

As the 31yearold captain tried in vain to find the right procedure in the handbook, the 41yearold first officer was unable to control the plane, the sources said.

The captain was silent at the end, they said. The first officer said ‘‘Allahu Akbar’’ (God is greatest).—