Previous flight of crashed Lion Air jet terrified passengers
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Relatives numbed by grief provided samples for DNA tests to help identify victims of the Lion Air plane crash that killed 189 people in Indonesia, as accounts emerged Tuesday of problems on the jet’s previous flight including rapid descents that terrified passengers.
Hundreds of rescue personnel searched seas where the plane crashed, sending more than three dozen body bags to identification experts, while the airline flew dozens of grieving relatives to the country’s capital, Jakarta.
The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea early Monday, just 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta for an island off Sumatra. Its pilot requested clearance to return to the airport 2-3 minutes after takeoff, indicating a problem, though the cause is still uncertain.
Aircraft debris and personal belongings including ID cards, clothing and bags found scattered in the sea were spread out on tarps at a port in north Jakarta and sorted into evidence bags. The chief of the police’s medical unit, Arthur Tampi, said it has received dozens of body parts for identification and is awaiting results of DNA tests, expected to take 4-8 days.
The disaster has reignited concerns about safety in Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation industry, which was recently removed from European Union and U.S. blacklists.
Two passengers on the plane’s previous flight from Bali to Jakarta on Sunday described issues that caused annoyance and alarm.
Alon Soetanto told TVOne the plane dropped suddenly several times in the first few minutes of its flight.
“About three to eight minutes after it took off, I felt like the plane was losing power and unable to rise. That happened several times during the flight,” he said. “We felt like in a roller coaster. Some passengers began to panic and vomit.”
His account is consistent with data from flight-tracking sites that show erratic speed, altitude and direction in the minutes after the jet took off. A similar pattern is also seen in data pinged from Monday’s fatal flight. Safety experts cautioned, however, that the data must be checked for accuracy against the plane’s “black boxes,” which officials are confident will be recovered.
Lion Air president Edward Sirait said there were reports of technical problems with the flight from Bali but they had been resolved in accordance with the plane manufacturer’s procedures. The airline didn’t respond to requests to verify a document purporting to be a Lion Air maintenance report, dated Sunday, that described inaccurate airspeed and altitude readings after takeoff.
In a detailed post online, Indonesian TV presenter Conchita Caroline, who was on Sunday’s flight, said boarding was delayed by more than an hour and when the plane was being towed, a technical problem forced it to return to its parking space.
She said passengers sat in the cabin without air conditioning for at least 30 minutes listening to an “unusual” engine roar, while some children vomited from the overbearing heat, until staff faced with rising anger let them disembark.
After the passengers waited on the tarmac for about 30 minutes, they were told to board again while an engine was checked.
Caroline said she queried a staff member and received a defensive response.
“He just showed me the flight permit that he had signed and he said the problem had been settled,” she said. “He treated me like a passenger full of disturbing dramas even though what I was asking represented friends and confused tourists who didn’t understand Indonesian.”