 PK-LQP, the aircraft involved in the accident | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 29 October 2018 |
| Summary | Loss of control in flight |
| Site | Java Sea, off the north coast of Karawang Regency, Indonesia 5°46′15″S 107°07′16″E / 5.77083°S 107.12111°E |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 737 MAX 8 |
| Operator | Lion Air |
| IATA flight No. | JT610 |
| ICAO flight No. | LNI610 |
| Call sign | LION INTER 610 |
| Registration | PK-LQP |
| Flight origin | Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, Tangerang, Indonesia |
| Destination | Depati Amir Airport, Pangkal Pinang, Indonesia |
| Occupants | 189 |
| Passengers | 181 |
| Crew | 8 |
| Fatalities | 189 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| This article is part of a series about the Boeing 737 MAX |
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Accidents
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Lion Air Flight 610 (JT610/LNI610)[a] was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, Tangerang, to Depati Amir Airport, Pangkal Pinang, in Indonesia. On 29 October 2018, the Boeing 737 MAX operating the route, carrying 181 passengers and 8 crew members, crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff killing all 189 occupants on board. It was the first major accident and hull loss of a 737 MAX, a then recently-introduced aircraft. It is the deadliest accident involving the Boeing 737 family. One diver also died during recovery operations.
The subsequent investigation, led by the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), revealed that a new software function in the flight control system caused the aircraft to nose down. That function, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), had been intentionally omitted by Boeing from aircraft documentation for aircrews, so the Lion Air pilots did not know about it nor know what it could do. Investigators concluded that an external device on the aircraft, the angle-of-attack (AoA) sensor, was miscalibrated due to improper maintenance which sent erroneous data to MCAS. In turn, MCAS responded by pushing the nose down. The problem had occurred on the same aircraft during its immediately preceding flight, and the pilots had recovered using a standard checklist for such a "runaway stabilizer" condition.
During the accident flight, the AoA sensor again fed erroneous data to the MCAS, which pushed the nose of the aircraft down. The pilots did not properly follow the checklist, with the result that MCAS remained active and repeatedly put the aircraft into an unsafe nose-down position until it crashed into the water.
After the accident, the United States Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing issued warnings and training advisories to all operators of the Boeing 737 MAX series, reminding pilots to follow the runaway stabilizer checklist to avoid letting the MCAS cause similar problems. The company also said that a software update would be made available to update the behavior of MCAS. These training advisories were not fully followed, however, and similar issues caused the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on 10 March 2019, prompting a worldwide grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft.
The final report by the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) of Indonesia criticized Boeing's design and the FAA's certification process for MCAS and said the issues were compounded by maintenance issues and lapses by Lion Air’s repair crews and its pilots, as well as Xtra Aerospace, a US-based company that supplied Lion Air with the AoA sensor.
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