Lost Information, Unaddressed Issues and More Failures of the NTSC Final Lion Air Flight 610 Report

Flight Safety Detectives

Episode 9 The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) has released its final report regarding the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 and John and Greg are far from satisfied. One thing is clear to these aviation experts: the focus was on returning the plane over and over again to revenue service, rather than fixing known issues. In this episode, John and Greg focus on critical maintenance issues, some of which are presented as little more than footnotes in the NTSC final report. They find that the report presents selectively filtered information and lacks analysis, falling far short of providing much-needed answers. They apply their expertise to analyze critical failures. Lion Air Flight 610 was a scheduled domestic flight operated by the Indonesian airline Lion Air from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta to Depati Amir Airport in Pangkal Pinang. On October 29, 2018, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 operating the route crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 passengers and crew. Photo credit: PK-LQP, the Lion Air Flight 610 aircraft. Photo credit: PK-REN from Jakarta, Indonesia - Lion Air Boeing 737-MAX8; @CGK 2018, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73958203