The pilot of a Lion Air flight from Indonesia’s Bali island on Sunday made a distress call minutes after take-off due to technical problems, but they were overcome and he pushed on to Jakarta. The same jet crashed on another flight hours later, killing all 189 people on board.
Reuters report exclusively that the chief of the airport authority for the Bali-Nusa Tenggara area, told them that after the call the pilot updated the control tower to say that the plane was flying normally and he would not return to the airport as requested.
“The captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar,” said Herson, who goes by one name, speaking by phone from Bali and referring to the resort island’s airport. The pilot of another plane that was approaching Bali just after the Lion Air jet had taken off said he was ordered to circle above the airport and listened in to a radio conversation between the Lion Air pilot and air traffic controllers.
“Because of the Pan-Pan call, we were told to hold off, circling the airport in the air,” said the pilot, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “The Lion plane requested to return back to Bali five minutes after take-off, but then the pilot said the problem had been resolved and he was going to go ahead to Jakarta.”
Pilots use ‘Pan-Pan’ calls to flag urgent situations. They are a step down from ‘Mayday’, which signals severe distress.
