Lion Air JH 160 Flight Investigation

The investigators identified several troubling factors regarding the Lion Air JT 160 flight accident, including the fact that it was a brand new aircraft on a short and regular flight. But a week after the accident, the biggest red flag seems to be the in – flight fright that occurred in the same plane a day before his disappearance.

On October 27, less than 24 hours before his fatal accident, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 experienced a glitch that frightened the flight crew. According to preliminary information, the Saturday accident was minor and did not affect the safety of the flight. After all, the pilots stayed on their course to land in Jakarta safely. But new details appeared showing that the flight was closer to a real emergency, pilots demanding a return to Denpasar shortly after takeoff.

It is not unusual for an aircraft that suffers a technical or technical problem to return to service quickly after repairs. But the fact that similar scenarios occurred on both flights raises an important question as to the quality of the airline's maintenance operations. "It looks like it could be a faulty repair," said an aviation safety expert, who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to talk about the investigation.

A maintenance log for the Saturday trip would indicate erratic readings of altitude and speed. Passengers on board this flight have since presented their own eyewitness accounts, suggesting that the flight was anything but normal, as a large drop in altitude caused chaos inside the cabin.

The pilot canceled his request to go back shortly after submitting his initial application. "The captain stated that the problem was solved and that he decided to continue his trip to Jakarta," said Herson (who only calls himself by his first name), responsible for the authority from Bali-Nusa Tenggara airport. This pilot was not part of the crew killed in the Lion Air 160 crash on Sunday; investigators will be interested in a report, as well as other crew members and passengers of the previous flight.

The investigation is being conducted by the Indonesian government, although an American team of experts from the National Transportation Safety Board has now joined, as the crash involved a US-made aircraft. An Indonesian team also travels to Boeing headquarters in the United States to talk to the designers of the all-new 737 MAX, a variation of the popular single-aisle workhorse that entered commercial service in 2017.

Getty ImagesEd Wray

The technical director of Lion Air has been suspended and the Indonesian Ministry of Transport has announced that he will conduct an audit of the company's maintenance and repair unit. At the same time, the Indonesian government, still under the shock of poor security monitoring and the establishment of all airlines on a blacklist by Western countries, also inspects all 737 MAXs operated in the country.

In the meantime, underwater search of the aircraft has been hampered by stormy sea conditions. The 189 passengers aboard the JT 160 are presumed dead, and divers and other rescue experts now devote themselves to raising their remains from depths of about 100 feet below the surface of the Java Sea, off the coast. from Jakarta. The debris field is vast: the plane is virtually disintegrated during the impact with water, according to investigators. So far, they have recovered the flight data recorder, one of the two vital black boxes, but it has apparently been seriously damaged and it is unclear how much information it will yield.