Lion Air Boeing crash preliminary investigations’ report released

Indonesian investigators have said the Lion Air Boeing 737 jet that plunged into the sea, killing 189 people in October, was not airworthy on a flight the day before it crashed. The Guardian reported. 

They further found that Lion Air must improve its safety culture and better document repair work on its planes.

The Boeing 737 MAX vanished from radar about 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta on Oct 29, slamming into the Java Sea moments after it had asked to return to the capital.

The transport safety agency did not pinpoint a definitive cause of the accident, with a final crash report not likely to be filed until next year.

But its investigators said that Lion Air kept putting the plane back into service despite repeatedly failing to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator in the days leading up to the fatal flight.

The findings will heighten concerns there were problems with key systems in one of the world’s newest and most advanced commercial passenger planes.

Investigators have previously said the doomed aircraft had problems with its airspeed indicator and angle of attack (AOA) sensors, prompting Boeing to issue a special bulletin telling operators what to do when they face the same situation.

An AOA sensor provides data about the angle at which air is passing over the wings and tells pilots how much lift a plane is getting. The information can be critical in preventing an aircraft from stalling.

The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has retrieved one of the plane’s black boxes – the flight data recorder – but is yet to locate the cockpit voice recorder. Black box data showed the plane had an airspeed indicator issue on multiple earlier flights, investigators said.

Lion must take steps “to improve the safety culture and to enable the pilot to make (a) proper decision to continue the flight”, the safety agency said, adding that the carrier must ensure “all the operation documents are properly filled and documented”.

Reuters reported earlier that a pilot of a doomed Lion Air jet told air traffic control that the plane was experiencing a “flight control problem” shortly before it crashed into the Java Sea last month, Indonesian investigators said on Wednesday.