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JAKARTA, Indonesia—Lion Air was ordered to suspend its technical director and other personnel pending an investigation into the crash of a new
Boeing
jetliner into the Java Sea that killed 189 people.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi, who ordered the suspensions, told reporters Wednesday that the low-cost carrier’s technical director, Muhammad Asif, would be replaced along with technicians and others who had cleared the jet to fly. Flight 610 crashed shortly after takeoff Monday.
The suspensions come as potentially faulty or misleading airspeed indications in the cockpit have emerged as an initial focus of safety experts delving into the crash, according to industry officials tracking the investigation.
Mr. Sumadi said Lion Air would face corporate sanctions pending the investigation’s result. Ministry spokesman Baitul Ihwan said the personnel suspension order was made because “the investigation is going to require their attention.”
Search at Sea
New Boeing 737 model went missing shortly after takeoff from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang.
A Lion Air spokesman confirmed the suspension of Mr. Asif, who was responsible for Lion Air’s maintenance operations. He couldn’t confirm whether other staff had been suspended.
The Indonesian navy, meanwhile, said one of its ships had detected a “very large” object suspected to be part of the plane’s fuselage on the seabed. Air-crash investigators said they were evaluating sounds that could be pings emitted from the plane’s black-box data recorders.
Didi Hamzar, a director at Indonesia’s search-and-rescue agency, said Wednesday that teams using sonar had detected an object suspected to be the plane and that about 100 divers had been deployed to the area.
Divers returning to one ship in the afternoon said they faced a strong current and poor underwater visibility, caused by sediment in the water and cloudy skies.
Search teams have been concentrating their search for the jet—a Boeing 737 Max 8 that was delivered to Lion Air in August—near a debris field off the north coast of Java. They have recovered human remains as well as personal items and small, broken pieces of the plane.
At a port near the capital, search workers have spread out collected items on tarps, sorting them into groups of shoes, bags and other pieces.
The loss of Lion Air Flight 610 was the first major accident involving the Boeing 737 Max 8, a new variant of the company’s popular single-aisle 737. Air-traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 610 shortly after it took off from Jakarta’s main airport for Pangkal Pinang, a city on the island of Bangka. The Transportation Ministry said the pilots had requested to return to the Jakarta airport before disappearing from radar.
Investigators have questioned Lion Air about a problem the jet experienced on a flight Sunday from Bali to Jakarta. The airline has said that the plane experienced a “technical issue” that was resolved prior to the fatal flight.
A search team pictured near the location of the plane crash, Oct. 30.
Photo:
Andrew Lotulung/Zuma Press
Data collected by Flightradar24, a flight-tracking network, indicated the plane suffered from possible erratic speed and altitude readings on both the flight that crashed and the previous flight, including a dip in altitude that a pilot described as unusual.
Boeing Co., which is participating in the probe, has privately expressed an interest in whether the pilots received unreliable speed data and about the maintenance history of the plane, according to people familiar with the conversations.
A Boeing spokesman declined to comment, referring to the company’s previous statement that it was providing technical assistance in the probe and directing questions to Indonesian authorities.
The Transportation Ministry has ordered the two Indonesian airlines flying the Boeing 737 Max 8, Lion Air and flag carrier
Garuda Indonesia
,
to report on any repetitive problems and explain any procedures they use to fix them.
The planes won’t be grounded and will remain in service, Pramintohadi, the acting director-general for air transportation, told reporters Tuesday. He said the plane that crashed was airworthy and safe to fly.
Lion Air, formally known as PT Lion Mentari Airlines, is one of the biggest budget airlines in Asia. It has had a patchy safety record. In April 2013, a new Boeing crashed into shallow water short of the runway on the resort island of Bali. All 108 passengers and crew were rescued. The crash was blamed on pilot error.
Rescuers say they’ve found debris and body parts off the coast of Jakarta at the presumed location where an Indonesian jetliner carrying 189 people went down minutes after takeoff. Photo: Getty Images
Indonesia has a long history of aviation disasters and its carriers were restricted for many years from flying to the U.S. and Europe for safety reasons. The last restrictions on Indonesia airlines were lifted in June this year.
—Joko Hariyanto, Gaurav Raghuvanshi and Andy Pasztor contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Otto at [email protected] and I Made Sentana at [email protected]
