Lion Air jet should have been grounded before fatal flight, Indonesia saysJAKARTA, Indonesia — A Lion Air jet that crashed last month should have been grounded over a recurrent technical problem and never permitted to make the fatal flight, Indonesian authorities said Wednesday in a report that took aim at the carrier's poor safety culture. But investigators said that Lion Air kept putting the plane back into service despite repeatedly failing to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator in the days leading up to the fatal flight. Dubious recordThe Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has retrieved one of the plane's black boxes—the flight data recorder—but is yet to locate the cockpit voice recorder. Despite a dubious safety record and an avalanche of complaints over shoddy service, the budget carrier's parent Lion Air Group, which also operates Batik Air and Wings Air, has captured half the domestic market in less than 20 years of operation to become Southeast Asia's biggest airline. Lion Air Flight JT610 plunged into the sea less than half an hour after taking off on a routine flight to Pangkal Pinang city.

Source: Philippine Star November 28, 2018 07:29 UTC