- ACCIDENT DETAILS
Date: October 29, 2018
Time: 0631
Location: Off Jakarta, Indonesia
Operator: Lion Air
Flight #: 610
Route: Jakarta - Pangkal Pinang
AC Type: Boeing 737-MAX 8
Registration: PK-LQP
cn / ln: 43000/7058
Aboard: 189   (passengers:181  crew:8)
Fatalities: 189   (passengers:181  crew:8)
Ground: 0
Summary: The airliner crashed into the Jakarta Sea, 13 minutes after taking off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. It was on a short 1 hour flight to Pangkal Pinang. After taking off from runway 25L, the aircraft made a climbing left-hand turn after which the crew radioed a request to return too the airport. The aircraft then showed an erratic pattern of flight and began losing altitude until it crashed into the sea, 9 miles off the Jakarta coast. It was reported the plane had problems the night before on a flight from Denpasar to Jakarta. When the 737 Max 8 was designed, it necessitated placing the engines more forward. This gave the plane a tendency to be nose heavy. To compensate for this, the MCAS system was written into the software. No one was told of this, not the pilots or airlines and did not appear in any manual. The MCAS was activated by the angle-of-attack sensor. The system only depended on one angle-of-attack sensor. If the angle-of attack sensor sensed a nose down attitude, it would adjust the trim and bring the plane to level flight. On the accident plane, the angle-of-attack sensor was faulty and gave false readings which caused the plane to pitch up. It also caused incorrect airspeed and altitude readings. The pilot tried to correct the nose-up attitude, but the system kept pushing the nose up. Eventually the plane’s stall speed was reached, and the plane went into a dive and crashed. A simple disconnect of the stabilizer trim would have solved the problem.
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