Indonesian investigators on Thursday confirmed the presence in the cockpit of an off-duty pilot reported to have saved a troubled Lion Air flight the day before the same plane crashed on Oct. 29. The third pilot, according to Bloomberg News, disabled the aircraft’s flight-control system and landed the plane safely in Jakarta. In the case of the day-earlier Lion Air flight, the guest pilot was able to disable the system in time. In addition to the Oct. 28 incident, the plane had multiple failures starting Oct. 26, including the four flights before the one that crashed into the Java Sea, according to the preliminary report on the Lion Air crash. The Ethiopian Airlines crash appeared to share similarities with the Lion Air case, including an erratic up-and-down flight path and the pilot reporting “flight control” problems shortly before crashing, authorities had said.

Source: Washington Post March 21, 2019 11:25 UTC