Lion Air pilots were looking at the manual when an airplane crashed | News from the world

The pilots of the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max who crashed in Indonesia were looking for a flight manual to try to understand why the plane was fighting against their orders, according to the information collected during the registration. voice in the badpit.

The crash investigation, which claimed the lives of 189 people on board last October, became even more important for Boeing and the airlines because of its alleged links with the disaster. Ethiopian Airlines, where 157 people died on the same model plane.

The Ethiopian government and the French accident investigators have stated that the flight data show obvious similarities between the two 737 Max accidents.

According to sources who spoke to Reuters, the voice recordings of Lion Air – which are not yet officially published – show that the captain asked the first officer to check the flight manual a few minutes after takeoff, while They were struggling to control the plane.

The captain was flying Lion Air JT610 when the 737 Max took off from Jakarta. Two minutes into the trip, the first officer reported a "flight control problem" to air traffic control. The sources indicated that the speed indicated in the badpit voice recording and an indicator indicated a problem on the captain's display, but not on the first officer's display.

Pilots flipped through the manual containing the checklists for abnormal events, as the jet aircraft had wrongly alerted the pilots in a stall, pushing their noses down – an automated response integrated into the software part of the system anti-stall system increase maneuvering program in the 737 Max.

As the captain was fighting to climb, the computer continued to lower his nose. "They did not seem to know that the filling was coming down," said the third source. "They only thought about the speed and the altitude. That was the only thing they were talking about.

The sources told Reuters that the pilots remained calm for most of the flight. Towards the end, the captain asked the first officer to fly while he was checking the manual. The 31-year-old Indian captain was silent at the end, while the 41-year-old Indonesian officer said "Allahu Akbar", an Arabic phrase meaning "God is the greatest".

The plane crashed shortly after, killing everyone on board.

Lion Air stated that all data and information had been provided to the investigators and declined to comment further.

Regulators around the world founded the 737 Max model last week after an accident in Ethiopia, the second deadly disaster in five months. The Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 black box recorders are being examined by French air accident investigators in Paris, who have not yet published an official report. However, the fact that the pilot also reported flight control problems in the same aircraft, which had climbed unevenly and crashed shortly after take-off, cast doubt on the safety of the aircraft. # 39; air.

More than 300 737 Max aircraft were decommissioned and deliveries were suspended for 5,000 additional orders. Boeing told the airline that he hoped to have a new software package by the end of the month.

Following the second fatal accident, the US authorities verified whether sufficient measures had been taken to ensure the safety of the aircraft. Federal prosecutors and regulators have opened an investigation into the development of the 737 Max, with careful consideration of how the US Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing certified the aircraft.

Questions were also asked about the training of the Lion Air crew. In the United States, pilots said that the builder had not highlighted any change in aircraft behavior, but Boeing said the existing safety procedures would allow drivers to bypbad the aircraft. The aircraft computer was wrongly attempting to force him to descend.

The preliminary report on the Lion Air accident showed that a different crew flying the same aircraft the night before had encountered the same problem but had solved it after reviewing three checklists. However, they did not pbad on this experience to the next crew, the report says.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the disaster could have been avoided on the previous flight only thanks to the presence of a third pilot out of service in the badpit, a captain of the sister carrier of Lion Air, Batik Air, who knew how to solve the problem. problem. flight control problems.

The final report on the Lion Air crash could be released in July, Indonesian investigators said. The cause has not been determined, but the preliminary report has highlighted Boeing's MCAS system, defective sensors, as well as maintenance and training of the airline.