Investigators in Indonesia revealed the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people in October 2018 was caused by a combination of design flaws in the airlines/boeing-shakes-up-management-team.html” target=”_self” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>Boeing 737 MAX, inadequate training of pilots and maintenance problems.
According to The Associated Press, the accident report released Friday revealed that pilots operating the flight from Jakarta to Sumatra were unprepared to deal with the malfunctions of the automated flight-control system (known as MCAS) on the 737 MAX.
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Authorities said there were a total of nine issues that combined to cause the tragedy, with chief investigator Nurcahyo Utomo saying, “If one of the nine hadn’t occurred, maybe the accident wouldn’t have happened.”
The National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) of Indonesia said the plane involved in the Lion Air crash last year relied on a airlines/new-report-from-safety-experts-slams-boeing-faa-over-737-max.html” target=”_self” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>single angle of attack sensor, which provided erroneous information and caused the nose of the aircraft to dip down.
“The investigation considered that the design and certification of this feature was inadequate,” KNKT head Soerjanto Tjahjono said in a statement. “The aircraft flight manual and flight crew training did not include information about MCAS.”
The report also revealed the plane had only been in service for two months and pilots had reported problems with the angle of attack sensor days before the crash. Maintenance crews installed a new sensor, but it was miscalibrated by 21 degrees.
A flight crew operating the plane after the repair had to manually override the automated system to land safely in Jakarta, but the pilots didn’t adequately report the problems they encountered. As a result, no further maintenance was conducted, and the crew members on the deadly flight were not notified of the incident.
Indonesian aviation expert Gerry Soejatman put much of the blame on Boeing, saying, “How Boeing could allow the MCAS to rely on a single source of data and act upon that single source without cross-checking the other angle of attack indicator is anyone’s guess.”
Following the release of details regarding the deadly crash, Boeing released a statement:
“We are addressing the KNKT’s safety recommendations, and taking actions to enhance the safety of the 737 MAX to prevent the flight control conditions that occurred in this accident from ever happening again. Safety is an enduring value for everyone at Boeing and the safety of the flying public, our customers, and the crews aboard our airplanes is always our top priority. We value our long-standing partnership with Lion Air and we look forward to continuing to work together in the future.”
