Divers scoured the Java Sea on Tuesday looking for clues that could explain why a brand new airliner fell out of the sky just moments after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board. Before Lion Air Flight 610 lost contact on Monday, the plane displayed erratic changes in its speed, altitude and direction, causing experts to speculate that a problem with the aircraft's instruments used to calculate airspeed and altitude may have contributed to the crash. Those indicators, or pitot tubes, have been implicated in previous aviation disasters, but experts said that determining the cause of the crash would ultimately require the recovery of the plane’s flight data recorders, the so-called black boxes.

Source: New York Times October 30, 2018 08:14 UTC