JAKARTA (March 21): Indonesia’s aviation safety regulator confirmed an off-duty pilot was aboard a Boeing Co 737 Max 8 a day before the aircraft crashed, after Bloomberg reported that a third person was in the cockpit and helped the crew disable a malfunctioning flight-control system.
In a press briefing on Thursday, National Transportation Safety Committee Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said the regulator interviewed the pilot, but declined to name the person or say what role he played in saving the aircraft. The NTSC won’t release details of the discussions until the investigation of Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed in October, is completed, Tjahjono said.
The Indonesian regulator didn’t mention the off-duty pilot in its preliminary report of Lion Air Flight 610 because they hadn’t interviewed him then as they were they were focusing on finding the black box, said Nurcahyo Utomo, lead investigator at the NTSC.
In the wake of the two accidents, questions have emerged about how Boeing’s design of the new 737 model were approved. The US Transportation Department’s inspector general is conducting a review of how the plane was certified to fly.
After the Lion Air crash, two US pilots’ unions said the potential risks of the system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, hadn’t been sufficiently spelled out in their manuals or training. None of the documentation for the aircraft included an explanation, the union leaders have said.
The system had baffled pilots by pushing the Lion Air plane’s nose downward dozens of times, exerting more and more force until they lost control. The same measure had kicked in with alarms blaring shortly after takeoff on a flight the evening before the October crash. The pilot riding in the jumpseat suggested the crew flip switches that cut power to the haywire system.
The MCAS system is meant to help counteract the changed center of gravity on the Max, which boasts larger and more powerful engines than its 737 predecessors. The software intervenes automatically, without a pilot’s knowledge, when a single sensor indicates the aircraft may be approaching a stall. The so-called angle-of-attack vane provided a faulty reading to the Lion Air crew.
Separately, the Indonesian commission disputed recent media reports revealing detailed contents of the cockpit voice recorder inside Lion Air 610, saying they were based on people’s opinions, rather than reality. Reuters earlier reported details of the struggle the crew faced on the day of the disaster, which resulted in the death of all 189 people aboard.