Lion Air jet should have been grounded before fatal flight : Officials
Jakarta, Nov 28 : A Lion Air jet that crashed last month should have been grounded over a recurrent technical problem and never permitted to make the fatal flight, Indonesian authorities said Wednesday in a report that took aim at the carrier's poor safety culture.
The Boeing 737 MAX vanished from radar about 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta on October 29, slamming into the Java Sea moments after it had asked to return to the capital.
The preliminary crash report from Indonesia's transport safety agency did not pinpoint a definitive cause of the accident, which killed all 189 people on board, including an Indian pilot, with a final report not likely to be filed until next year.
But investigators said that Lion Air kept putting the plane back into service despite repeatedly failing to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator in the days leading up to the fatal flight.
Its second last flight was from Denpasar in Bali to Jakarta.
"During (that) flight, the plane was experiencing a technical problem but the pilot decided to continue," Nurcahyo Utomo, aviation head at the National Transport Safety Committee, told reporters.
"The plane was no longer airworthy and it should not have kept" flying, he added.
The findings will heighten concerns there were problems with key systems in one of the world's newest and most advanced commercial passenger planes.
Investigators have previously said the doomed aircraft had problems with its airspeed indicator and angle of attack (AOA) sensors, prompting Boeing to issue a special bulletin telling operators what to do when they face the same situation.
The report confirmed that initial finding, saying the plane's data recorder detected an issue with the AoA.
It also said the plane's "stick shaker" -- the steering-wheel like handles in front of the pilots that vibrates to warn of a system malfunction -- was "activated and continued for most of the fight."
An AOA sensor provides data about the angle at which air is passing over the wings and tells pilots how much lift a plane is getting. The information can be critical in preventing an aircraft from stalling.
The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has retrieved one of the plane's black boxes -- the flight data recorder -- but is yet to locate the cockpit voice recorder.
Black box data showed the plane also had an airspeed indicator issue on multiple earlier flights, investigators said.
Lion must take steps "to improve the safety culture" and ensure "all the operation documents are properly filled and documented", the transport agency said.
Despite a dubious safety record and an avalanche of complaints over shoddy service, the budget carrier's parent Lion Air Group, which also operates Batik Air and Wings Air, has captured half the domestic market in less than 20 years of operation to become Southeast Asia's biggest airline.
Indonesia's aviation safety record has improved since its airlines, including national carrier Garuda, were subject to years-long bans from US and European airspace for safety violations, although the country has still recorded 40 fatal accidents over the past 15 years.
The report stopped short of making any recommendations to Boeing but the US planemaker has come under fire for possible glitches on the 737 MAX -- which entered service just last year.
The APA, a US airline pilots union, said that carriers and pilots had not been informed by Boeing of certain changes in the aircraft control system installed on the new MAX variants of the 737.
"I am really surprised if Boeing has not shared all the flight performance parameters with pilots, unions, and training organisations," University of Leeds aviation expert Stephen Wright told AFP before the report was released, adding that "a deliberate omission would have serious legal ramifications" Several relatives of the crash victims have already filed lawsuits against Boeing, including the family of a young doctor who was to have married his high school sweetheart this month.
Lion Air Flight JT610 plunged into the sea less than half an hour after taking off on a routine flight to Pangkal Pinang city.
Authorities have called off the grim task of identifying victims of the crash, with 125 passengers officially recognised after testing on human remains that filled some 200 body bags.
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EC demands extra security as unrest grips Bangladesh afresh
Dhaka (PTI): The Election Commission (EC) has demanded extra security for its chief, other commissioners and officials as fresh unrest visibly gripped Bangladesh after gunmen shot an upcoming parliamentary polls candidate and frontline leader of last year's violent street movement dubbed 'July Uprising'.
"The EC has written to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) urging comprehensive security arrangements for the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Election Commissioners (ECs), senior officials of the Election Commission Secretariat," the state-run BSS news agency reported on late Saturday.
The EC simultaneously sought the extra security for its field-level offices ahead of the 13th national election, as two of them came under attack in southeastern Lakshmipur and southwestern Pirojpur by unidentified miscreants after the announcement of the schedule for the upcoming polls on Thursday.
The commission demanded an additional escort vehicle for the CEC, while one such police escort with a vehicle was currently in place for him. It asked for round-the-clock police escorts for the four commissioners and the senior secretary.
The letter said the enhanced security measures were "urgent and necessary," while EC officials said their 10 regional offices, 64 district election offices and 522 sub-district level offices would store important documents and election materials.
The EC on Thursday said the upcoming parliamentary election would be held on February 12 next year, while a day later, Sharif Osman Hadi was shot from a close range in the head, critically wounding him, as he initiated his election campaign from a constituency in the capital.
Critically ill former prime minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) simultaneously asked Muhammad Yunus' government to provide security for all candidates in the upcoming election after the attack on Hadi, who leads a radical right-wing cultural group called Inquiab Mancha.
"We demand that the real culprit be identified immediately and brought under the law, and we call upon this government to ensure the security of all candidates without delay," BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said.
Hadi was also a frontline leader of last year's student-led violent uprising that toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024.
His Inquilab Mancha was also at the forefront of a campaign to disband the Awami League, which the interim government complied with in May this year, disqualifying the party from contesting the polls.
The government on Saturday ordered a nationwide security clampdown called 'Operation Devil Hunt 2' amid escalated fears over the law and order situation and promised to issue firearms licenses for election candidates for their own security.
Home adviser (retd) Lieutenant General Jahangir Alam Chowdhury said the government had taken steps to ensure special security for the "frontline fighters" of the July Uprising and promised to issue firearms licenses for the election candidates.
He emphasised that the second phase of the 'Devil Hunt' was aimed at helping ensure public safety and combat the growing threat of illegal arms.
The operation was initially launched in February this year following protests over an attack on the private house of a former minister of the ousted government in the northern suburb of the capital, when it targeted alleged "henchmen" and supporters of the now disbanded Awami League.
