Families of Lion Air crash victims criticise Boeing over alert issue

Families of victims in the Indonesia Lion Air crash hit out at Boeing Monday over its admission that engineers had identified a safety system glitch well before the fatal accident, in the latest knock to the plane maker's reputation.

Boeing said Sunday engineers had found the safety alert issue on its 737 MAX aircraft in 2017, a year before the deadly crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people.

According to Boeing, a supposedly standard piece of equipment that tells pilot about disagreements between angle of attack (AOA) indicators -- which measure the plane's angle vis-a-vis oncoming air to warn of impending stalls -- did not activate unless an additional optional indicator was purchased by airlines.

Neither the Lion Air aircraft nor the Ethiopian Airlines jet that went down several months later, killing 157 people, had the feature.

"That's negligence from Boeing in regards the AOA system," said Evi Samsul Komar, whose son and nephew were on the fatal flight.

"Boeing needs to be more careful."