Boeing warns of software after Indonesia crash

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Airplane manufacturer Boeing said Wednesday that it has issued a bulletin to airlines worldwide warning of erroneous readings from flight-control software on its planes, after an almostnew Lion Air jetliner crashed into the sea soon after takeoff, killing the 189 people on board.

Boeing, which is assisting in an investigation into what went wrong in the Oct. 29 crash of one of its new 737 Max 8 jets, said in a statement that it issued a bulletin Tuesday as “part of its usual process.”

The bulletin informed airline operators what to do if they receive false readings from flight-control software that measures the angle of the plane and alerted flight crews of the procedure they have to follow.

The bulletin from Boeing was the first indication that an error with the aircraft’s systems may have caused problems for the Lion Air flight, which took off from Jakarta. Instead of a smooth takeoff, the plane’s altitude fluctuated dramatically, and the plane increased in speed before nose-diving into the Java Sea 13 minutes later.

Indonesian investigators have recovered the plane’s flight data recorder, which showed that the plane’s airspeed indicator malfunctioned on its last four flights.

“The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has indicated that Lion Air Flight 610 experienced erroneous input from one of its AOA (Angle of Attack) sensors,” said Boeing in the statement. A misreading in the sensor can cause the plane to dive suddenly.

Indonesian investigators said Wednesday that an AOA sensor on the jet was replaced the day before the doomed flight, on Oct. 28, when a pilot flying the same aircraft on a different route, from Bali to Jakarta, reported problems with it. The pilot on the crashed Lion Air flight had asked shortly after takeoff to return to the airport in Jakarta but lost contact with air traffic controllers afterward.