The KNKT did confirm, however, that an off-duty pilot was on board the previous day’s flight JT043 from Denpasar, Bali, to Jakarta. The pilot reportedly helped prevent the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft crashing.

“Regarding flight JT043 from Denpasar to Jakarta, which had problems after the replacement of an angle of attack [AOA] sensor, the KNKT confirms that another pilot was present in the cockpit of the plane,” KNKT Head Soerjanto Tjahjono said on Thursday, without identifying the pilot. “The pilot is Boeing 737 MAX 8 qualified. The pilot in question has been interviewed by the KNKT.” He declined to elaborate on the role of the off-duty pilot in saving the aircraft.

Earlier it was reported that the so-called “dead-head” pilot on the flight told the crew to turn off the automated system designed to lower the nose of the plane when it receives information from the AOA sensors that the aircraft is flying too slowly or steeply, and for them to take back manual control of the plane. The flight landed safely in Jakarta.

The next day, the same aircraft on flight JT610 from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, Bangka-Belitung Islands, crashed into the Java Sea killing all eight crew members and 181 passengers.

The KNKT denied that reported details of the conversation between the pilots recorded by the CVR on flight JT610 had been released by the committee.

KNKT head investigator Nurcahyo Utomo said his committee was currently the only organization that possessed the recording.

“We believe the details [of the pilots’ conversation that have been reported in the media] are different from what we have heard. So we don’t believe that the CVR recording has been leaked,” said Nurcahyo, who added that the recording had different “words, sentences and timing” to those which had been reported.

He also said the KNKT had allowed officials from the United States National Transportation Board and Lion Air officials to hear it and read its transcripts for quality-control purposes.

There were “strict rules” in place prohibiting the officials from bringing any recording devices to the listening sessions.

Reuters has quoted three off-the-record sources who claim to have knowledge of the CVR’s contents. The sources claimed that the pilots of JT610 frantically searched for a fix in the Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 handbook before the aircraft nosedived into the waters of the Java Sea.

The sources claimed that the Indonesian first officer had shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great) immediately before the plunge.

“What we assume is that the story is based on the evidence that we provided in an earlier report or another publication,” Nurcahyo said. “Some of what is reported is true but it is not a precise transcript of the CVR.”

For instance, he explained that crew members, who were “calm for the greater part of the flight”, had become alarmed 20 seconds before the plane crashed, as the quoted sources described.

Although he refused to comment on the pilots’ frantic search, Nurcahyo said that “every pilot is supposed to refer to the handbook” in such cases.

The committee also denied that the CVR for the earlier Denpasar-Jakarta flight had also been leaked, given that the flight JT610 recording had overwritten the previous one. The device, he said, would do so every two hours.

Five months after the deadly crash, a similar Boeing 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines on flight ET302 crashed in similar circumstances to JT610. The KNKT said it was too early to say whether the same problems that caused the crash of JT610 had occurred on ET302.

“The KNKT has requested the Ethiopian authorities to work together on the investigation. The teamwork is for our mutual needs, to complete [each other’s] data on the accidents, which could further improve aviation safety in the future,” said Soerjanto, adding that the committee would publish a final report around August or September. (mai)

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