Indonesia crash aircraft had instrument problems

An Indonesian passenger jet which crashed into the sea with 189 people on board had logged "unreliable" readings of altitude and airspeed on its previous flight, according to an aviation safety website. 

The Boeing 737 MAX 8, operated by budget carrier Lion Air, crashed on Monday about 13 minutes after take-off from Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. 

Officials have said they are not expecting to find any survivors.

Website aviation-safety.net said the previous flight of the aircraft, from Denpasar to Jakarta, showed "erratic values in altitude and airspeed immediately after take-off." 

A technical log for that flight, obtained by the website read: "Airspeed unreliable and alt disagree shown after take off."

Lion Air chief executive Edward Sirait confirmed to dpa Tuesday the plane experienced the issues reported by the website on its previous flight, "but the problems were resolved overnight."

Asked by dpa whether the plane experienced the same issues on the doomed flight, Sirait said: "Let's wait for the investigation by KNKT," referring to the National Transportation Safety Committee.     

Aviation-safety.net said the Lion Air flight that crashed also showed similar erratic values.

"Altitude data sent via ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast) continue to show an erratic pattern, varying roughly between 4500 and 5350 feet. The values then rapidly decline until contact is lost at 06:32 hours," it said.

Sirait said on Monday that the pilot, an Indian national with 6,000 flying hours, requested to return to the airport because of an unspecified problem. 

Rescue officials said 24 bags containing debris and human remains had been collected form the Java Sea.

Ships, some equipped with sonar equipment, have been deployed to find bodies and the aircraft's wreckage, which has yet to be located, said Made Oka of the National Search and Rescue Agency.

"The weather is good. It's only a matter of time," said search agency director Muhammad Syaugi, adding that more than 300 personnel from various institutions were involved in the search. 

He said rescuers found debris as far as 53 nautical miles from the aircraft's last known location. 

Soerjanto Tjahjono, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Committee, said he hoped to find the aircraft's black boxes as soon as possible.

The black boxes, consisting of a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder, could shed light on the cause of the accident.   

"We hope they aren't too far from the aircraft's main body," he said. 

Fajriansyah Mardiasi, whose civil servant father was on the doomed flight, was anxiously waiting as the search entered a second day.

"He is a good father and someone I look up to," he told TVOne broadcaster. "We loved spending time together when he was not working."  

Indonesian President Joko Widodo late Monday urged search teams to work around the clock to find the aircraft. 

"I have ordered the SAR agency, the military and police to deploy additional ships," he said.

The aircraft was bound for Pangkal Pinang in the province of Bangka-Belitung Islands when it crashed. 

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic country, has experienced a boom in low cost-carriers following the liberalization of the aviation industry in the early 2000s.  

Lion Air is the largest among budget airlines operating in the country.

In 2013, a Lion Air Boeing 737 carrying more than 100 people crashed into the sea while trying to land on the resort island of Bali, nearly splitting the fuselage into two, though there were no fatalities. 

In June, the European Union lifted a blanket ban of all Indonesian airlines from its list of carriers that do not meet international safety standards.

The blanket ban preventing Indonesian carriers from operating in Europe was imposed in 2007 following a string of deadly air incidents. 

Several Indonesian airlines, including flag carrier Garuda, were taken off the ban list in 2009 after steps were taken to improve safety.

Before Monday's crash, Indonesia's last major commercial aviation accident occurred in 2014, when an Air Asia Airbus A320-216 plunged into the Java Sea during bad weather, killing all 155 passengers and seven crew on board. 

The following year, a C-130 Hercules belonging to the Indonesian Air Force crashed into the city of Medan on Sumatra island, killing 121 people on board and 22 people on the ground.