Crash jet’s previous problems revealed
NEW DETAILS about the crashed Lion Air jet’s previous flight have cast more doubt on the Indonesian airline’s claim to have fixed technical problems.
The brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane plunged into the Java Sea early on Monday, just minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.
Herson, head of 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 take-off but then reported the problem had been resolved.
Several passengers have described the aircraft suffering a sudden terrifying loss of altitude.
Lion Air has said the unspecified problem was fixed after Sunday’s flight, but the fatal flight’s pilots also made a “return to base” (RTB) 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, said Herson, who uses a single name.
“The captain said the problem was resolved and he decided to continue the trip to Jakarta.”
Data from flight-tracking websites shows both flights had highly erratic speed and altitude after take-off, though confirmation is required from the aircraft’s “black box” flight recorders.
Investigators displayed one of the jet’s two flight recorders at a news conference on Thursday evening, later confirmed to be the flight data recorder, and said they would immediately attempt to upload information and begin analysis.
The steel-encased memory unit of the recovered flight recorder had separated from its base plate, showing the plane hit the sea at tremendous speed.