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Pilots of doomed Lion Air jet were searching for instructions to recover flight at time of crash: Indonesian investigators
- Data from the black box voice recorder shows there was ‘panic’ in the cockpit in the moments leading up to the deadly disaster, investigators said
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The pilots in charge of the Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet that crashed in October killing 189 people were searching for the right checklist in their handbooks as the plane went down after experiencing airspeed and altitude issues, Indonesian investigators said on Thursday.
At a press conference, the investigators said they had 90 per cent of the data from cockpit voice recorder needed for a final report on the crash, which is now expected to be released in August.
Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at Indonesia’s national transportation committee said the recording showed there was “panic” in the cockpit in the last 20 seconds of the flight.
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“At the end of the flight it seemed the pilot felt he could no longer recover the flight, then the panic emerged,” he said while declining to say which of the two pilots panicked.
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The investigation has taken on new urgency after a second crash involving a 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines last week killed 157 people and led to the global grounding of the model.
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French air accident investigation agency BEA said on Tuesday that the flight data recorder in the Ethiopian crash showed “clear similarities” to the Lion Air disaster.
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