Lion Air pilots were looking at handbook when plane crashed

March 20, 2019 23:07

The pilots of the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max that crashed in Indonesia were searching a flight manual to try to find why the plane kept lurching downwards against their commands, according to reports of the cockpit voice recording.

The investigation into the crash, which killed all 189 people onboard last October, has become even more significant for Boeing and airlines due to its suspected links with the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, where 157 died on the same model of plane.

Ethiopias government and French accident investigators have said flight data shows clear similarities between the two 737 Max crashes.

According to sources who spoke to Reuters, the voice recordings from Lion Air yet to be officially released show the captain asked the first officer to check the flight manual within minutes of takeoff as they struggled to control the aircraft.

The captain was at the controls of Lion Air flight JT610 when the 737 Max took off from Jakarta. Two minutes into the flight, the first officer reported a flight control problem to air traffic control. The sources said airspeed was mentioned on the cockpit voice recording, and that an indicator showed a problem on the captains display but not the first officers.

The pilots looked through the handbook containing checklists for abnormal events, as the jet incorrectly alerted pilots it was in a stall, pushing the nose down an automated response built into the software as part of the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system anti-stall system in the 737 Max.

As the captain fought to climb, the computer continued to push the nose down. They didnt seem to know the trim was moving down, the third source said. They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about.

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