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Confusion, Then Prayer, in Cockpit of Doomed Lion Air Jet

A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 on the tarmac of Soekarno Hatta International airport near Jakarta, Indonesia.Credit...Willy Kurniawan/Reuters

Hannah Beech and

JAKARTA, Indonesia — As the seconds ticked by on the doomed Indonesian flight, the pilot handed the controls to his co-pilot and flipped through the pages of a technical manual, trying to figure out what was happening.

Then, as the nose of Lion Air Flight 610 repeatedly bucked downward, Harvino, the co-pilot, began to pray.

The supplication was caught on the final seconds of audio in the cockpit voice recorder.

“God is great,” Mr. Harvino, an experienced Indonesian aviator, said, then recited a verse asking God to grant a miracle.

But there was no miracle on Oct. 29, when the brand-new Boeing 737 Max 8 dived into the Java Sea in Indonesia, amid good weather, after 12 minutes in the air.

“I think he knew it was unrecoverable,” said Nurcahyo Utomo, the head of the air accident subcommittee of the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee, who listened to and described the contents of the cockpit voice recorder that was retrieved from the ocean floor in January.

[How the U.S. joined other nations in grounding the Boeing plane.]

Until that point, he said, the pilots had sounded in control and calm.

With the crash of a second nearly brand-new Boeing 737 Max 8 this month, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 slammed into the ground near Addis Ababa, there has been a renewed focus on the investigation into what caused Flight 610 to crash in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.

Indonesian transportation officials say they do not expect to publish a final report on the accident until July or August at the earliest. A preliminary report, based on the contents of the flight data recorder — one of the two so-called black boxes that give investigators clues to what happened in aviation accidents — was released in November.

The cockpit voice recorder was not found until after the preliminary report was released, so the conversations between Bhavye Suneja, an Indian national who was piloting the plane, and Mr. Harvino were not included in the initial investigative account.

The report noted that the plane’s nose suddenly shifted downward more than 20 times, a motion that investigators think may have been caused by the incorrect triggering of a new automated anti-stall system on the Boeing Max model.

Since the Lion Air crash, pilots certified to fly the Max have complained that they were not briefed on the new system or on how to counter it should incorrect data force the nose down.

Indonesian aviation regulations bar the public release of a transcript of the audio in a cockpit voice recorder. But investigators from the National Transportation Safety Committee who listened to the recording described the sounds emanating from the cockpit as the flight crew fought to take control of a plane that seemed almost magnetically propelled toward earth.

Throughout the brief flight, an ominous rattle could be heard on the voice recorder, evidence that a device called a stick shaker was clattering to alert the pilots of a potential stall that could lead to a crash, said Ony Soerjo Wibowo, an air safety investigator. A stall can occur when a plane ascends too sharply.

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‘Max Efficiency, Max Reliability’: How Boeing Sold Its New 737

Boeing introduced the 737 Max as a reliable fuel- and cost-efficient solution to air travel in the 21st century. After two fatal Max crashes, all of the Max aircraft in the world are believed to have been grounded.

It was sold as a next generation aircraft. But it has now been involved in two fatal crashes in just five months. The Boeing 737 Max 8 entered the market in 2017, a part of the 737 Max class, and became an instant hit. Within the first six months, more than 4,000 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes had been ordered. It quickly became the company’s best-selling plane ever. The new model was advertised as a rare win-win for both airlines and passengers. “It’s going to give them max efficiency, which leads to profitability; max reliability, and to the flying public: max passenger appeal.” ‘The demand for something new.” Boeing debuted the new planes in response to market pressures. In late 2010, Boeing’s archrival, Airbus, had just announced a new fuel-efficient version of its best selling A320. Boeing countered with the introduction of the 737 Max — “The Max uses 14 percent less fuel than current 737s —” its own version of fuel- and cost- efficient aircrafts. Their message to customers was: These are new planes that aren’t that new. “Boeing 737 —” “Newest arrival in the Boeing family of airliners, the 737 attracts a crowd.” Boeing’s first 737 model took off in 1967. “A new queen of the sky.” For the Max class, Boeing upgraded the engine and design. They added more cabin space, bigger windows and multicolored ceiling lights to help modernize the planes. But the company kept the 737 name because it evoked a legacy of reliability and built trust. “I’ll tell you what, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful airplane. Not only were they able to modernize the airplane with new engines, and new winglets, but they were able to keep that classic iconic 737 look.” But that isn’t the whole story. The new model was also designed to help carriers save money. “Which means CEOs like the Max. Really like the Max.” Major changes to the plane would have required pilots to be retrained. But Boeing’s position was that the new models handled enough like the old ones. Though the 737 Max 8 planes did actually have a number of changes, including the size and location of the engines. The higher and more forward position of the larger engines can cause the plane’s nose to pitch up, a potential danger. To compensate for this, Boeing added a computerized system called MCAS to prevent the plane’s nose from getting too high and causing a stall. But the F.A.A. initially said pilots did not need to be informed of this system update. Experts say that the lack of training for the new system may have helped cause a deadly crash with a Max 8 off the coast of Indonesia in October, killing 189 people. All of the Boeing 737 Max 8s in the world are believed to have been grounded, while a second crash in Ethiopia is investigated. Boeing said it supported the decision to ground the planes and is cooperating with investigators.

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Boeing introduced the 737 Max as a reliable fuel- and cost-efficient solution to air travel in the 21st century. After two fatal Max crashes, all of the Max aircraft in the world are believed to have been grounded.CreditCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

[Read more on why the 737 that crashed is Boeing’s best-selling plane ever.]

Investigators have speculated that incorrect data — including a 20-degree differential between readings from two sensors designed to measure, essentially, the difference between the pitch of the plane and the direction it is moving through the air — could have mistakenly triggered both the stick shaker and the anti-stall system, which is called MCAS.

The plane had recorded days of questionable data related to air speed, altitude and the angle of the plane’s climb.

In the first sign of trouble in its doomed flight on Oct. 29, the plane dipped around 700 feet, and in the subsequent minutes, MCAS appears to have kept dragging the plane’s nose down, prompting the pilots to try to push the plane back up by using switches that control stabilizers on the tail.

The flight crew radioed back to the air traffic control tower in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, to request permission to return to the airport, which was granted. The pilot also asked for the plane to be given a 3,000-foot clearance above and below as it continued to roller coaster through the air.

Flight 610 never turned back to the airport.

In the cockpit voice recording, the pilots discussed unreliable airspeed and altitude readings they were getting, national transportation safety officials said.

They consulted the manual to deal with these anomalies. But they did not seem to know about the MCAS system, nor did they speak about what was causing the plane to repeatedly push downward.

Shortly after Mr. Harvino’s prayer, the plane disappeared from radar, and the cockpit voice recorder stopped. The plane plummeted 5,000 feet, crashing into the Java Sea with such force that parts of the fuselage turned into powder.

Mr. Harvino’s remains are missing to this day.

James Glanz contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Confusion, Then Prayer, in Lion Air Jet’s Cockpit. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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