TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The private airline company, PT Lion Mentari Airlines, will send a letter to the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) for clarifying the preliminary report of its probe into the crash of JT 610, the company`s CEO said.
"We found an incompatibility between the National Transportation Safety Committee`s preliminary report and news contents published by several local media," Lion Air President Director Edward Sirait told a press conference on Wednesday evening.
Sirait said there were media reports informing that the Lion Air plane that crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29 had not been able to fly normally since its flight from the resort island of Bali to Jakarta on Oct. 28.
"This statement is not true," he said, adding that he would file a request for the KNKT`s clarification to find whether or not the statement was made by the committee`s credible sources.
If the KNKT failed to respond to Lion Air`s written clarification, the airline company would take a legal action, he said.
Lion Air has denied allegations that its aicraft had not been able to fly well since its flight from Denpasar, Bali Island; the airline company had given false data; and it failed to create safety culture properly.
The Lion Air flight JT 610 crashed into the Java Sea off Tanjung Karawang, West Java, 13 minutes after taking off from Cengkareng`s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at 6:20 a.m. local time on its way to Pangkalpinang on Monday (Oct. 29).
The Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, carrying 189 people on board, reportedly lost contact at 6:33 a.m. local time.
In connection with the related authorities` endeavor to unearth the causes of the Lion Air plane crash, Indonesian divers had succeeded in finding the ill-fated Lion Air plane`s flight data recorder, or the plane`s first black box, on Nov. 1.
In response to this fatal accident, Vice President Jusuf Kalla remarked that the government would consider the proposed formation of an aviation court.
An Aviation Court is similar to a Shipping Court, which tries skippers over negligence while carrying out their professional duties, thereby leading to casualties.
ANTARA
