While no official cause has been determined for Monday’s crash of Lion Air flight JT-610, the government has nonetheless already taken decisive action to aid the crash investigation.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said today that his ministry has temporarily relieved Lion Air’s technical director — identified by Kompas as Muhammad Arif — of his duties effective today and made it clear that his suspension is related to JT-610’s crash investigation.
“The reason [for his dismissal] is purely because of the accident the other day,” Budi told the press today, as quoted by Kumparan.
Not only that, Budi said the ministry also suspended an unspecified number of Lion Air technicians who cleared JT-610 to fly on its ill-fated flight on Monday. He also said the government would intensify inspections on all Lion Air aircrafts.
Despite Lion Air being a private entity, Budi said the Transportation Ministry has the legal authority to suspend airline directors and employees while the investigation — performed by the National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) — is ongoing. Their suspensions may be lifted if they were cleared of accountability for the crash at the conclusion of the investigation.
That said, Lion Air as a whole may receive sanctions from the government if the crash investigation finds the airline to be at fault.
Previously, the airline’s CEO did acknowledge that JT-610 had experienced unspecified technical issues on its flight the previous day but said they had been resolved.
Lion Air executives say they are ready to accept whatever sanction are issued by the government if the airline is found to be at fault for JT-610’s crash.
JT-610, which departed Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport on Oct. 29 at 6:20am and was scheduled to arrive in Bangka Belitung capital Pangkal Pinang at 7:20am, disappeared from the radar around 13 minutes after take-off.
The Aviation Agency says the flight’s pilot requested to return to Soekarno-Hatta shortly after take off before communications were lost with the plane. Basarnas then found evidence that the plane crashed in the waters of Karawang Bay off the coast of West Java soon after.
Authorities have so far brought back 48 body bags from the crash site and appear to be close to locating the main fuselage of the plane underwater.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that the Lion Air technical director and staff were dismissed by the Transportation Ministry, as widely reported by local media in Indonesia. We have fixed the story to say that the technical director and staff were actually suspended while the crash investigation is ongoing, as clarified in this CNN Indonesia article. We apologize for the error.
Reader Interactions