The pilot of a Lion Air flight from the Indonesian island of Bali on Sunday transmitted a radio signal a couple of minutes after take-off attributable to technical problems, but managed to beat them and continued the flight to Jakarta. The same plane crashed on one other flight a couple of hours later, 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 when speaking by phone from Bali and referring to the airport on the resort island.
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” signals to signal urgent situations. They are a step down from “Mayday,” which signals serious danger.
“Due to the Pan-Pan call, we were ordered to hold off and hover over the airport in the air,” said the pilot, who didn’t want to provide his name because he was not authorized to discuss with the media.
“The Lion aircraft requested a return to Bali five minutes after takeoff, but the pilot announced 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 at 6:20 a.m. the subsequent day, sure for Bangka Island, off the coast of Sumatra, and crashed into the ocean 13 minutes later. Just before the accident, the pilot asked to return to base.
A Lion Air spokesman declined to comment when asked concerning the warning concerning the earlier flight, citing the continued 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 route, which was resolved “in accordance with procedure.”
Amid media speculation concerning the plane’s airworthiness, the transport minister on Wednesday suspended Lion Air’s technical director and three other officials to facilitate an investigation into the crash.
The suspended technicians “have issued recommendations regarding this (last) flight,” the ministry said in a press release. It didn’t say what number of technicians were suspended.
It may even deal with the Boeing 737 MAX, which was introduced into industrial service last 12 months and had an accident-free record until Monday. The single-aisle MAX is an update of the Boeing 737 series, probably the most widely produced family of economic aircraft on the earth and widely considered to have a robust safety record.
According to the findings of the accident investigator and the flight tracking website, in the course of the previous flight from Bali on Sunday, the plane was flying erratically and its speed readings were unreliable.
According to FlightRadar24 data, the jet showed unusual changes in altitude and speed in the primary couple of minutes of the flight – including a drop of 270 metres in 27 seconds when it was climbing normally – before it stabilised and flew 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.
Divers on Thursday recovered the plane’s flight data recorder because it lay slammed into the muddy seabed off the coast of Jakarta. The 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.
