Aviation expert claims Bomb could have caused Lion Air crash. An aviation expert has suggested a bomb could have caused a crash that has left 189 people feared dead near Indonesia.
Aviation analyst Captain John Nance said there wasn’t much to suggest what happened, but it was unusual that a new plane crashed.
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“An airplane like this does not normally fall out of the sky, even a 737 of an older variety,” he told Newsbuh
“There’s just nothing on board the airplane, including the engines, that could cause a catastrophic nose over like this.
“So we’re looking at the possibility of, for instance, a bomb.”
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Capt Nance suggested there could have been other reasons for the crash including pilot mishandling or a murder-suicide.
Mechanical issues are also a possibility, but Capt Nance said he couldn’t think what on the plane would have been able to cause a massive failure.
“Back in the days when you had aviation gasoline in airlines, DC7 and so on, you could have a wing blow off because something sparked on an otherwise empty tank,” he said.
“We know this can happen in a cavernous tank in a 747… but that’s not a thing that can happen to a 737 these days for many different reasons.”
He didn’t think that it was a maintenance issue though because the plane had only been in the air for a couple of months.
“What we’ve got here is a flight path that doesn’t make sense, outside of a bomb, or outside of some massive failure,” he said.
Flightradar24’s track of the flight shows the plane rising and climbing repeatedly with the speed also varying, both of which aren’t typical on the latest, computer-driven aircraft. Multiple failures involving the plane’s crew and equipment on the plane are possible explanations, from an erroneous speed indication to some sort of electronic interruption.
Shortly before the disaster, the plane’s pilot, Indian national Bhavye Suneja, had reported ‘technical difficulties’ and, minutes after take-off, asked to return to the airport, an official said.
Traffic control allowed the return, but the aircraft then vanished from radar and plunged 5,000ft into the sea.
The flight, which crashed shortly after take-off, had suffered instrument problems the day before, according to a technical log obtained by the BBC.
The technical log from the plane’s previous flight from Bali to Jakarta suggests the Indonesian flight had an ‘unreliable’ airspeed reading and the captain and first officer had conflicting altitude readings the day before the crash.
Australian aviation expert and former Emirates pilot Captain Byron Bailey said he believed the pilot’s lack of training was to blame.
‘It’s not the airplane at fault, I’m sure of that. You really have to look at budget airlines and the training their pilots are going through,’ he told Nine News.
The two-month-old 737 Max 8, operating as Flight 610, took off from the capital Jakarta headed for the island tourist destination of Pangkalpinang, at 6:20 a.m. local time
‘The problem with these budget airlines is that unlike Qantas, Emirates and everyone else, the pilots get in the flight simulator every six months and practice these things.
‘But if these guys are running on a low budget, they aren’t getting their simulator training.’
Lion Air’s president said the Boeing 737 MAX 8, which went into service just months ago, had gone in for repairs ahead of its final flight.
‘It got repaired in Denpasar (in Bali) and then it was flown to Jakarta,’ Edward Sirait told AFP. ‘Engineers in Jakarta received notes and did another repair before it took off’ on Monday. That’s the normal procedure for any plane.’
