Lion Air Crash Investigators Say Plane Shouldn’t Have Been Allowed to Fly
AVOIDABLE
The crash killed 189 people—investigators say it should have been grounded.
Reuters / Willy Kurniawan
The Lion Air plane that crashed in Indonesia last month, killing all 189 people on board, wasn’t airworthy and shouldn’t have been allowed to fly, investigators said. The Boeing 737 Max plane crashed into the Java Sea shortly after departing Jakarta on Oct. 29. A preliminary report has found technical problems had been reported on previous flights and investigators have said the plane should have been grounded. “In our opinion, the plane was no longer airworthy and it should not have continued,” Nurcahyo Utomo, aviation head at the National Transport Safety Committee, told reporters. Data from the jetliner shows pilots fought to save the plane almost from the moment it took off because the Boeing 737’s nose was repeatedly forced down by an automatic system that was receiving incorrect sensor readings. The nose was forced downward over two dozen times during the 11-minute flight before it plummeted into the sea at around 450 miles per hour, killing everyone on board.
