A team from the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) revealed a glitch that the crashed Lion Air plane encountered during its flight.
The authorities discovered that the plane’s airspeed indicator was damaged during its last four flights. This was revealed after recovering and analyzing the contents of the plane’s light data recorder (FDR), also called as black box.
“We have started to examine the FDR and will continue to analyze it. We found the plane’s speed indicators was damaged on the previous four flights,” KNKT Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said.
An airspeed indicator is a basic aircraft instrument that helps pilots monitor the plane’s speed. Airspeed indicators help pilots know the speeds at which an airplane will take off, land, stall.
Lion Air Flight JT 610 which was bound for Pangkal Pinang from the Indonesian capital Jakarta crashed into the sea only minutes after it took off with 189 people on board.
The Boeing 737 passenger plane lost contact with the ground control and it was last tracked crossing the sea.
The plane flew from Jakarta at 06:20 AM local time on Monday and was set to land at Depati Amir airport in Pangkal Pinang after an hour.
Its blackbox was found last week in the Java Sea, near Karawang, West Java.
