The Lion Air pilots whose plane nosedived into the sea last month, killing all those aboard, were battling multiple malfunctions during the short, doomed flight, according to a trove of new data released on Thursday by Indonesian investigators.
They faced a cacophony of warnings that started seconds after takeoff and continued for the remaining 11 minutes before the crash.
The alerts included a so-called stick shaker — a loud device that makes a thumping noise and vibrates the control column to warn pilots that they are in danger of losing lift on the wings — and instruments that registered different readings for the captain and copilot, according to data presented to a panel of lawmakers in Jakarta.
It also showed for the first time that in the final seconds, as they struggled to pull the Boeing Co 737 Max 8 out of a dive that was being commanded by the plane’s flight computers, the control column was resisting them, requiring a force of as much as about 100 pounds (45.4kg) of pressure.
However, the data also showed that the plane was controllable — the pilots has done so for about 10 minutes before the final plunge — and records from the previous flight of the same jet showed another set of pilots had an identical set of failures and landed without incident.
“There are so many questions, it’s sort of hard to put in one short statement,” said Roger Cox, a retired investigator with the US National Transportation Safety Board and a former airline pilot.
“I would be very interested in knowing why one crew as able to cope with this stick shaker and trim anomaly, and why the next crew could not and I’d want to know why Lion Air could not or would not repair the problem,” Cox said.
Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people onboard. The jet was knifing through the air at about 805kph or more in its final seconds as it neared the water, according to the plane’s crash-proof flight recorder.
In a statement, Boeing deferred comment to the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee.
The manufacturer has sent two updates to operators of the Max jet since the accident, which include reminders that there are existing emergency procedures for such situations.
Preliminary findings might be released on Wednesday, Soerjanto Tjahjono, the committee’s chairman, told lawmakers in Jakarta.
In the past week, Boeing has stepped up its response by pushing back on suggestions that the company could have better alerted its customers to the jet’s new anti-stall feature.
The three largest US pilots’ unions and Lion Air director of operations Zwingly Silalahi have expressed concern over what they said was a lack of information.
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