JAKARTA : The pilot of a Lion Air flight from Indonesia\u2019s Bali island on Sunday made a radio alert 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.
\nHerson, chief of the airport authority for the Bali-Nusa Tenggara area, told Reuters that after the alert the pilot updated the control tower to say that the plane was flying normally and he would not return to the airport as requested.
\n\u201cThe captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar,\u201d said Herson, who goes by one name, speaking by phone from Bali and referring to the resort island\u2019s airport.
\nThe 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.
\n\u201cBecause of the Pan-Pan call, we were told to hold off, circling the airport in the air,\u201d said the pilot, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
\n\u201cThe 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.\u201d Pilots use \u2018Pan-Pan\u2019 calls to flag urgent situations. They are a step down from \u2018Mayday\u2019, which signals severe distress.
\nThe Denpasar-Jakarta flight landed at the Indonesian capital\u2019s airport at 10:55 p.m. local time on Sunday. The same Boeing 737 MAX jet took off at 6:20 a.m. the next morning, bound for Bangka island, off Sumatra, and plunged into the sea 13 minutes later. Just before the crash, the pilot had made a request to return to base.
\nA Lion Air spokesman declined to comment when asked about the alert on the earlier flight, citing the ongoing crash investigation. The budget airline\u2019s CEO, Edward Sirait, said earlier this week that a technical problem had occurred on the Denpasar-Jakarta flight but it had been resolved \u201caccording to procedure\u201d.
\nAmid media speculation over the airworthiness of the aircraft, the transport minister suspended Lion Air\u2019s technical director and three other officers on Wednesday to facilitate the crash investigation. The suspended technicians \u201cissued the recommendations for that (final) flight\u201d, the ministry said in a press release.
\nIt did not say how many technicians had been suspended. During its earlier flight from Bali on Sunday, JT43, the aircraft flew erratically and its airspeed readings were unreliable, according to an accident investigator and a flight tracking website.
\nAccording to data from FlightRadar24, the jet displayed unusual variations in altitude and airspeed in the first several minutes of flight – including an 875-foot drop over 27 seconds when it would normally be ascending – before stabilising and flying on to Jakarta.
\nHowever, the pilots kept the plane at a maximum altitude of 28,000 feet compared with 36,000 feet on the same route earlier in the week. National Transport Safety Committee (NTSC) deputy chief Haryo Satmiko told reporters on Tuesday there were technical problems on the flight, including unreliable airspeed readings.
\nDivers on Thursday retrieved a flight data recorder from the plane that lay shattered on the muddy sea floor off the coast of Jakarta. The NTSC said it would examine the device to get a clearer picture of what happened on the flight from Bali on Sunday in addition to the flight that crashed on Monday.
\nHerson, the airport authority chief in Bali, said the aircraft had encountered a \u201cspeed and altimeter\u201d problem but the captain was confident that it was airworthy and pressed on.
\n\u201cHe requested to return to the airport for RTB (return to base) but … they updated and flew to Jakarta. The pilot double-checked to ensure that they could fly,\u201d he said. Two passengers from Sunday\u2019s flight posted on Instagram, reporting that they had been concerned about problems with the air conditioning system and cabin lighting before the plane left Bali nearly three hours late.
\nAnother passenger on JT43 described, in a talkshow broadcast by Indonesia\u2019s TVOne, a turbulent flight during which the seatbelt signs were never turned off.
\n\u201cWhen the plane took off, it climbed and then went down. It rose again, and then dropped again violently, shaking,\u201d said Diah Mardani. \u201cEveryone in the plane shouted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest), Subhanallah (Glory to God). We recited every prayer we knew.\u201d
\nDozens of divers are taking part in the massive recovery effort along with helicopters and ships, but authorities have all but ruled out finding any survivors.
\nOn a Jakarta dockside, grief-stricken relatives sifted through clothes, wallets and other retrieved personal effects, as authorities sent body parts to hospital for DNA testing.
\nForensic experts identified Jannatun Cintya Dewi as the first victim of the crash Wednesday evening. The 24-year-old\u00b4s coffin arrived in her East Java hometown Sidoarjo Thursday, draped in a green and yellow cloth and inscribed with Arabic writing and carried through the neighbourhood by pallbearers.
\nDewi\u00b4s mother collapsed and had to be carried into their home, while friends and relatives wiped away tears as the casket was laid in a freshly dug grave sprinkled with flowers, a bowl of fruit and two palm branches at one end.
\nLion Air has been plagued by safety woes and customer complaints over unreliable scheduling and poor service. The budget carrier was involved in a number of incidents including a fatal 2004 crash and a collision between two Lion Air planes at Jakarta\u00b4s Soekarno-Hatta airport. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JAKARTA : The pilot of a Lion Air flight from Indonesia\u2019s Bali island on Sunday made a radio alert 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. Herson, chief of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-news","8":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n