The pilot of a Lion Air plane flying from the Indonesian island of Bali on Sunday radioed for technical problems a number of minutes after take-off, but managed to beat them and flew to Jakarta. The same jet crashed a number of hours afterward one other flight, killing all 189 people on board.
Herson, head of the Bali-Nusa Tenggara Airport Authority, said that after the alert was raised, the pilot informed the control tower that the plane was flying normally and wouldn’t return to the airport as requested.
“The captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar,” said Herson, who uses one name while speaking by phone from Bali and referring to the resort island’s airport.
The pilot of one other plane that was headed to Bali just after the Lion Air jet took off said he was ordered to circle the airport and overheard a radio conversation between the Lion Air pilot and air traffic controllers.
Pilots use “Pan-Pan” calls to point urgent situations. They are a step below “Mayday,” which signals serious suffering.
“Because of the Pan-Pan call, we were told to hold off and circle the airport in the air,” said the pilot, who declined to provide his name because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
“The Lion aircraft requested to return to Bali five minutes after take-off, but the pilot announced that the problem had been resolved and he intended to continue to Jakarta.”
The Denpasar-Jakarta flight landed on the airport within the Indonesian capital on Sunday at 22:55 local time.
The same Boeing 737 MAX took off the following morning at 6:20 a.m. and headed for Bangka Island off Sumatra, before crashing into the ocean 13 minutes later. Just before the crash, the pilot asked to return to base.
A Lion Air spokesman declined to comment when asked in regards to the earlier flight alert, citing the continuing investigation into the crash.
The low-cost airline’s CEO, Edward Sirait, said earlier this week that there was a technical problem on the Denpasar-Jakarta flight however it was resolved “in accordance with procedure.”
Amid media speculation in regards to the plane’s airworthiness, the Transport Minister suspended Lion Air’s chief technical officer and three other officials on Wednesday to facilitate an investigation into the crash.
The suspended technicians “issued recommendations regarding this (final) flight,” the ministry said in a news release. It was not reported what number of technicians were suspended.
It will even highlight the Boeing 737 MAX, which entered business service last 12 months and was accident-free until Monday. The single-aisle MAX is an upgraded version of the Boeing 737, the world’s most produced family of economic aircraft and widely considered to have a wonderful safety record.
On an earlier flight from Bali on Sunday, the plane flew erratically and speed readings were unreliable, in response to an accident investigator and a flight tracking website.
According to FlightRadar24 data, the jet showed unusual changes in altitude and speed throughout the first couple of minutes of flight – including dropping to an altitude of 270 meters within the 27 seconds it was normally climbing – before stabilizing and flying to Jakarta.
However, the pilots kept the plane at a maximum altitude of 28,000 feet, down from 36,000 feet on the identical route earlier within the week.
On Thursday, divers recovered a flight data recorder from a plane that lay crashed on the muddy seabed off the coast of Jakarta. NTSC said it might examine the device to get a clearer picture of what happened on Sunday’s flight from Bali, in addition to the flight that crashed on Monday.
