Lion Air flight 610 plummets by unknown cause

Indonesian Lion Air flight 610 unexpectedly crashed Monday, Oct. 29, killing all 189 passengers.

The plane took off from the capital city, Jakarta, and was set to land in Pangkal Pinang. This particular flight was fairly routine and should have only taken about an hour.

After only 13 minutes in air, the plane began to plummet, according to CNN. The crash killed everyone on board.

Falling into the Java sea, many search efforts have found no evidence of survivors or the Boeing 737 itself. Teams of divers and rescue organizations have been sent out since the crash on Monday, and the local Indonesians are distraught by lack of findings.

Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia, has been supporting his citizens and helping inspect the debris from the crash.

Hundreds of family and community members are mourning over their lost loved ones. One woman, Nuni Hesti, told CNN that she lost her son and grandson due to the crash. The two had traveled to Jakarta over the weekend for a football game.

Hesti is not alone in this, many parents and children are grieving over the same situation and are awaiting answers.

Little information is known at this point about why the plane crashed. According to BBC, the aircraft had experienced technical issues when flying from Bali to Jakarta the previous day.

Altitude and speed readings were apparently unreliable and were showing false information, however, there didn’t seem to be any threatening issues with the aircraft.

Engineers supposedly looked over the plane and deemed it was safe after following routine procedures to resolve whatever issues there may have been.

Sophomore marketing major Jennie Wilson blames a lack of in depth checks for the crash.

“They have to do routine checks they can’t do in-depth ones for every plane because there isn’t time and that would anger passengers. They aren’t at fault if they did their routine checks. That’s just sadly how the airplane industry works,” Wilson said.

The black box on Lion Air 610 has recently been found a couple miles from the crash site. Black boxes in planes are crucial after crashes because it is a flight data recorder and could provide the information of what the last minutes of the flight consisted of.

What many find strange is that the pilot never called to declare an emergency. They simply asked for permission to turn back around.

This could have been crucial because the nearest airport would have made a safe landing space for Lion Air 610, but since there was not an emergency call, there would have been no place for them to land safely.

“The track of the aircraft after [the plane turned around], the aircraft made a very steep dive after that, which is not typical of what they would’ve done. They would have maintained altitude and made that turn and come back to [the airport,” said CNN Safety Analyst.

Theoretically, the plane could have landed back at the airport safely if an emergency would have been declared and a steady altitude had been maintained.

Because of this, many speculate that something worse had happened that the pilot was not aware of. After the pilot stated they were turning around, they lost all communication.

The results from the black box can take up to six months to process so the families and communities will not have answers until then.