The Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet that crashed in Indonesia on Monday flew erratically the previous evening and its airspeed readings were unreliable, according to an accident investigator and a flight tracking Web site.
According to data from FlightRadar24, the jet displayed unusual variations in altitude and airspeed in the first several minutes of flight after taking off from Denpasar, Bali, on Sunday evening — including an 267m drop over 27 seconds when it would normally be ascending — before stabilizing and flying on to Jakarta.
However, the pilots kept the plane at a maximum altitude of 8,534m compared with 10,973m on the same route earlier in the week.
Photo: AFP
Lion Air CEO Edward Sirait on Monday told reporters a technical problem had occurred on the Denpasar-Jakarta flight, but it had been resolved “according to procedure.”
National Transportation Safety Committee (NSTC) Deputy Chairman Haryo Satmiko yesterday told reporters there were technical problems on that flight, including unreliable airspeed readings.
“The suspected cause of the accident is still being investigated and it is making us all curious what could have caused it,” he said, without elaborating.
Two passengers on Sunday’s flight posted on Instagram, reporting that they had been concerned about problems with the air-conditioning system and cabin lighting before the plane departed nearly three hours late.
“I was angry because as a passenger who had paid her ticket, we have every right to question the aircraft’s safety,” said one of them, TV presenter Conchita Caroline.
She added there was a “weird” engine noise upon take-off that continued during flight.
It was not clear if the cabin problems were in any way related to the technical trouble mentioned by Sirait.
The Denpasar-Jakarta flight landed at 10:55pm on Sunday, giving engineers six-and-a-half hours at most for checks before it was dispatched for the fatal Jakarta-Pangkal Pinang flight at 6:20am on Monday
The plane plunged into the sea minutes after taking off from Jakarta and all 189 people on board are believed dead.
FlightRadar24 also reported unusual air speeds and altitudes in the few minutes that Flight JT610 was in the air.
Photos of alleged technical and maintenance logs following the Sunday flight have been circulating online, but to date they have not been verified as accurate by the airline or investigators.
Sirait declined to detail the maintenance procedures take and yesterday said the airline had provided the relevant aircraft flight and maintenance logs to the NTSC.
NTSC Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said there was a similarity between the maintenance log circulating online and the one received from Lion Air, but he had not checked the exact details.
Satmiko said the agency had not yet met with the technician who handled the maintenance of the aircraft between the two flights.
Safety experts say the crash investigation is at a very preliminary stage and it is too early to speculate about the cause.
However, pilot and engineering sources said the FlightRadar24 data for both flights, while not conclusive, could be a potential indicator of something wrong with the pitot static systems. Those are pressure-sensitive instruments that feed airspeed and altitude information to an avionics computer.
“Certainly the big changes in climb/descent very early on in the flight is what makes me think unreliable speed,” said a pilot at another airline, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media.
Two fishermen who saw the crash from their boat out at sea said that the plane swayed slightly, but made no noise as it fell, almost horizontal with its nose slightly down. There was an explosive sound as it plunged nose-first into the sea, and then there was a column of smoke.
The weather was clear at the time of the crash at 6:33am, the NTSC said.
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