New details highlight problems

JAKARTA, Indonesia — New details about the crashed Lion Air jet’s previous flight cast more doubt on the Indonesian airline’s claim to have fixed technical problems, as hundreds of personnel searched the sea for a fifth day Friday for victims and the plane’s fuselage.

The brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane plunged into the Java Sea early Monday, just minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

Herson, head of the Bali-Nusa Tenggara Airport Authority, said the pilot on the plane’s previous flight on Sunday from Bali requested to return to the airport not long after takeoff but then reported the problem had been resolved. Several passengers have described the problem as a terrifying loss of altitude.

Lion Air, a budget carrier that is the biggest domestic airline in Indonesia, has said the unspecified problem was fixed after Sunday’s flight, but the fatal flight’s pilots also made a “return to base” request not long after takeoff.

“Shortly after requesting RTB, the pilot then contacted the control tower again to inform that the plane had run normally and would not return” to Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport on Sunday, Herson, who uses a single name, told The Associated Press. “The captain said the problem was resolved and he decided to continue the trip to Jakarta.”

Data from flighttracking websites show both flights had highly erratic speed and altitude after takeoff, though confirmation is required from data recorded by the aircraft’s “black box” flight recorders.