An off-duty pilot averted a crash of the same Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet just a day before it crashed into the ocean in October.
The revelation comes as Boeing faces intense scrutiny over the safety of the model of plane, which has crashed twice in the last six months. The most recent Ethiopian Airlines crash brought further attention to the Boeing 737 jet and its flight control system.
In October, a Lion Air flight crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 people on board. But the day before, the same plane was saved when an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit jumped in and helped disable the flight control system as it began to malfunction, according to Bloomberg.
That same jet, under control of a different crew the next day, had the same malfunction leading to the crash. The detail was not included in Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee’s report on the crash. The finding illustrates the challenges that some pilots have had with the Boeing 737 MAX 8’s control system, showing how in some cases pilots have been able to disable it, while in others they have not.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Boeing 737 MAX 8 after the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, pending investigation. The Ethiopian Airlines crash killed all 157 on board. An Ethiopian official said there were clear similarities between the two crashes.
