Certainly looking more and more like a fault with the plane, with reports a flight the previous day asked to return to the airport because of problems, then regained control and continued with its flight.

With the limited info available the fault seems to be related to the pitot tubes and/or air speed indicators.

Reports say the black box retrieved is the flight data recorder so shouldn't be long before some details are available.

Looks like a serious case of negligence by the airline.

Lion Air crash: pilot on earlier flight asked to turn plane around
Day before disaster, same aircraft had problems minutes after takeoff but managed to continue on to Jakarta
Reuters
The Lion Air plane that crashed into the Java Sea with 189 on board had technical problems minutes after takeoff the day before, with the pilot putting out an urgent call that is just one level below a Mayday call and requesting to return to the airport.

Herson, chief of the airport authority for the Bali-Nusa Tenggara area, said that after the alert the pilot updated the control tower to say it was flying normally and he would not return to the airport after all.

“The captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar,” said Herson, who goes by one name, speaking by phone from Bali and referring to the resort island’s airport.

The pilot of another plane approaching Bali just after the Lion Air jet had taken off said he was ordered to circle above the airport and listened to a radio conversation between the Lion Air pilot and air traffic controllers.

“Because of the Pan-Pan call we were told to hold off, circling the airport in the air,” said the pilot, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media. Pilots use Pan-Pan calls to flag urgent situations. They are a step down from Mayday, which signals severe distress.

“The Lion plane requested to return back to Bali five minutes after takeoff but then the pilot said the problem had been resolved and he was going to go ahead to Jakarta,” the pilot said.

The Denpasar-Jakarta flight landed at its destination at 10.55pm local time on Sunday.

The same Boeing 737 Max jet took off at 6.20am the next day bound for Bangka island, off Sumatra, and plunged into the sea 13 minutes later. Just before the crash the pilot had made a request to return to base.

A Lion Air spokesman declined to comment when asked about the alert on the earlier flight, citing the ongoing crash investigation.

The budget airline’s CEO, Edward Sirait, said this week that a technical problem had occurred on the Denpasar-Jakarta flight but it had been resolved “according to procedure”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... ane-around

"Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, said on Monday that the flight data recorder from the crashed plane shows that the problem occurred in its last four flights, including the fatal flight on October 29. "

According USA today, Tjahjono said: "Data from the black box showed that two flights before Denpasar-Jakarta also experienced the same problem. In the black box there were four flights that experienced problems with the airspeed indicator."

The flight's erratic altitudes indicated a flaw in the airspeed measurement system, they said.

https://www.thisisinsider.com/lion-air- ... m=referral

Pitou tube frozen or full of bugs. Same thing that took down Air France from Brazil - can't work out the airspeed so the autopilot can't control the engines.

cptrelentless wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:17 am Pitou tube frozen or full of bugs. Same thing that took down Air France from Brazil - can't work out the airspeed so the autopilot can't control the engines.

Would there not be two , or more airspeed indicators. Seems unlikely that they both or all were faulty at the same time .

Duncan wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:22 am

cptrelentless wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:17 am Pitou tube frozen or full of bugs. Same thing that took down Air France from Brazil - can't work out the airspeed so the autopilot can't control the engines.

Would there not be two , or more airspeed indicators. Seems unlikely that they both or all were faulty at the same time .

There's indeed more than one, and all should be checked during a pre-flight walk around and during speed readings during take off.

Even if all pitot tubes failed there's backup systems not relying on the pitot tubes, and if all those failed as well there's the handbook. For every altitude there's a throttle setting for a more or less level flight with speeds within the safe range. They could have just switched of the autopilot, set a certain percentage of thrust depending o the altitude they wanted to keep, and start to run some checks. Even if these pilots were not trained as well as some others I am sure if I can come up with this idea, these two pilots could too.

The AF crash happened under totally different circumstances because it was mid ocean and crashed at night.

How does an airline allow an aircraft to fly after not one, not two, not three, but four legs where an anomaly with the airspeed indicator has been recorded as well as pilots experiencing flight issues alarming enough to declare Pan-Pan?

Kung-fu Hillbilly wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:02 am How does an airline allow an aircraft to fly after not one, not two, not three, but four legs where an anomaly with the airspeed indicator has been recorded as well as pilots experiencing flight issues alarming enough to declare Pan-Pan?

That's where negligence becomes a very real possibility. Continuing to fly a plane with a known fault.

timmydownawell wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:22 am

Kung-fu Hillbilly wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:02 am How does an airline allow an aircraft to fly after not one, not two, not three, but four legs where an anomaly with the airspeed indicator has been recorded as well as pilots experiencing flight issues alarming enough to declare Pan-Pan?

That's where negligence becomes a very real possibility. Continuing to fly a plane with a known fault.

I understood from the news the failure was logged, reported and taken care of. So for Lionair management there was no reason to ground that plane at that time. Planes get fixed all the time.
The pilots flying the plane on the final leg checked the log before departure and they did not find anything alarming as well, otherwise they wouldn't have flown the plane.
Maybe something went terribly wrong with the repair? Maybe the issue wasn't reported correctly and the real issue was never fixed? Questions questions....