The plane flew like a see-saw. Up for a few seconds, down the next. At the controls of the ill-fated flight was captain Bhavye Suneja, a 31-year-old man from Delhi who was living in Indonesia’s Jakarta.
Suneja was the captain of Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed into sea minutes after takeoff on October 29 this year. All of the 189 people on board died in the crash, including the flight’s crew.
A draft investigation report released by Indonesian authorities has detailed what was literally was a fight between man and machine in the cockpit of the Lion Air Flight 610.
The preliminary findings of the investigators further the theory they are working on — the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that was flying as Lion Air Flight 610 on that day had a faulty sensor that was making the plane’s computer push the aircraft downward.
And, the human beings in the cockpit were fighting against the machine to swing the plane upwards.
Ultimately, the plane, which had taken off from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.
THE PROBLEM
The Boeing jet that was flying as Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29 was the latest generation of the 737 line. The 737 is a popular aircraft used by airliners on domestic routes.
The Lion Air Flight 610 that crashed was a 737 Max 8, which comes with a computerised system that automatically pushes the plane’s nose downward when the aircraft senses that the nose is pointing too high.
On Lion Air Flight 610, this system malfunctioned, investigators believe.
A sensor that gauges at what angle the air outside the plane hits its exterior was either taking in incorrect data or a computer on board was incorrectly processing the correct data.
As a result, the flight’s main computer was getting information that the nose of the aircraft was pointed too high. (If the nose of any aircraft is too high, it can stall and literally drop like a rock.)
And so, the computer was automatically pushing the plane’s nose down towards the ground. The machine was doing so in order to a ‘fix’ a problem that did not exist.
All this, readers must note, is the working theory of the investigators probing the Lion Air Flight 610 crash.
MAN VS MACHINE
Now, pilots flying the Boeing 737 Max 8 do have a way to override the plane’s automatic response.
However, the 737 Max 8 apparently has a different process for overriding this response compared to other generations of the 737.
Boeing, the maker of these planes, says the procedure has been laid out in the aircraft’s checklist (a checklist essentially a to-do list pilots refer during various stages of a flight).