Crashed jet found?

The smashed fuselage of a crashed Indonesian Lion Air jetliner may have been found, a top military commander said yesterday, as Jakarta ordered the removal of the budget carrier’s technical director and staff who cleared the doomed flight for take-off. Authorities said they were confident sonar technology had pinpointed the location of the Boeing 737-MAX plane that plunged into the sea on Monday.

“We strongly believe we’ve determined the coordinates of the JT 610 fuselage,” military chief Hadi Tjahjanto told reporters. Authorities are racing to find the downed jet’s location in water some 30-40 meters (100-130 feet) deep in the hope of also finding flight data recorders crucial to crash investigations. Dozens of divers were taking part in the 1,000-strong personnel recovery effort along with helicopters and ships, but authorities have all but ruled out finding any survivors.

Boeing officials are expected to meet with Lion Air on Wednesday, after Indonesia ordered an inspection of the US plane maker’s 737-MAX jets. The downed plane, which went into service just a few months ago, was en route to Pangkal Pinang city when it crashed into the Java Sea off Indonesia’s northern coast moments after it had asked to return to Jakarta on Monday. Aviation experts say it is too early to determine what caused the accident.

But Lion’s admission that the plane had an unspecified technical issue on a previous flight -- as well as the plane’s abrupt nosedive just 12 minutes after takeoff -- have raised questions about whether it had any faults specific to the newly released model, including a speed-and-altitude system malfunction.