As the Lion Aircrew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off duty pilot that happened to be riding in the cockpit. That extra aviator, who had been seated at the cockpit jumpseat, correctly recognized the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia's investigation.
The following day, under control of another crew confronting What investigators said, was an equal mistake, the jetliner collapsed in the Java Sea murdering all 189 aboard. The previously undisclosed detail on the sooner Lion Air Flight is a brand new clue in the puzzle of some 737 Max pilots confronted with the malfunction have been able to stop disaster whilst the others lost control of their planes and crashed. The existence of a 3rd aviator in the cockpit wasn't contained in Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee's Nov. 28 report on the crash and has not previously been reported. The so-called deadhead aviator on the earlier flight out of Bali to Jakarta told the crew to cut power to the motor driving down the nose, in accordance with the people familiar, part of a record that all pilots need to memorize.
All of the data and info that we've on the flight and the airplane have been filed to the Indonesian NTSC. We cannot offer additional comment at this stage because the ongoing investigation on the crash, Lion Air spokesman Danang Prihantoro said by phone. The Indonesia security committee report said the plane had several failures on previous flights and hadn't been properly repaired. Representatives of Boeing and Indonesians security committee declined to comment on the earlier flight. The security system, designed to keep planes from climbing too steeply and stalling, has come under scrutiny by investigators of the crash as well as another one less than five months after in Ethiopia. A malfunctioning detector is believed to have duped The Lion Air plane's computers in believing it had to automatically deliver the nose down to prevent a stall.
