Indonesian authorities have identified the body of Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja who was captain of the Lion Air passenger plane that crashed into the Java Sea on October 29, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said in a tweet on Saturday. The remains will be handed over to his family.
All 189 people on board flight JT 610, flying from Denpasar to Jakarta, were killed.
Suneja, 31, was a resident of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar area. According to his LinkedIn profile, Suneja had completed pilot training from Bel Air International before joining the Indonesian low-cost carrier in March 2011. He specialised in flying Boeing 737 passenger jets. Suneja married in 2016 and was based in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, PTI reported.
Suneja and his crew experienced multiple malfunctions almost immediately after the Boeing 737 Max plane took off from the Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, reported Bloomberg on Saturday. New data released by Indonesian investigators showed that the warnings continued for 11 minutes until the plane crashed into the sea.
The alerts included a stick shaker – a loud device that makes a thumping noise and starts off vibrations in the control column to warn pilots that they are in danger of losing lift on the wings – and several instruments indicating different readings for the captain and the co-pilot.
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