NEW DELHI: Boeing issued a special bulletin Wednesday addressing a sensor problem flagged by Indonesian safety officials investigating the crash of a Lion Air 737 that killed 189 people last week. The doomed jet was a Boeing 737-Max 8, one of the world’s newest and most advanced commercial passenger planes. India has six such jets.
The planemaker said local aviation officials believed pilots may have been given wrong information by the plane’s automated systems before the fatal crash. “The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee has indicated that Lion Air flight 610 experienced erroneous input from one of its AOA (Angle of Attack) sensors.”
“As on date, six B737 Max 8 aircraft in India have accumulated about 4,000 hrs since their induction effective June 2018 onwards. There are no significant technical issues,” a Directorate General of Civil Aviation official said on October 31.
Boeing issued an Operations Manual Bulletin directing operators to existing flight crew procedures to address circumstances where there is erroneous input from an AOA sensor. An AOA sensor provides data about the angle at which wind is passing over the wings and tells pilots how much lift a plane is getting. The information can be critical in preventing the plane from stalling.
(With inputs from AFP)