Terrified passengers recall plane having problems

Grim task: Chief of Indonesia’s Lion Air flight JT610 search and rescue operations Muhammad Syaugi looking through recovered belongings believed to be from the crashed flight at Tanjung Priok port. (Below) Relatives of passengers waiting at Bhayangkara R. Said Sukanto hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. — Reuters

JAKARTA: The Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet that crashed in Indonesia, flew erratically during a flight the previous evening when it experienced a “technical problem”, according to data from flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

After taking off from Denpasar on the holiday island of Bali on Sunday evening, the jet reported unusual variations in altitude and airspeed in the first several minutes of flight – including an 266.7m drop over 27 seconds when it would normally be ascending – before stabilising and flying on to Jakarta.