Official: 3rd pilot aided next-to-last Lion Air flight

The chairman of Indonesia's transportation safety agency confirmed Thursday that a third pilot was in the cockpit of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 on a troubled flight the day before the aircraft crashed on October 29, just minutes after takeoff.

However, Soerjanto Tjahjono, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Committee, on Thursday disputed reports citing recordings of cockpit discussions during that flight.

The third pilot, who has not been identified, was qualified to fly Max 8s and was deadheading aboard the October 28 flight from Bali's Denpasar airport to Jakarta.

The aircraft encountered the same problems that appear to have caused it to crash a day later, but the three pilots aboard managed to resolve the issues and safely reached Jakarta.

Tjahjono said the NTSC interviewed the pilot but legally cannot publish its findings.

Interest in the investigation into the October 29 crash off Indonesia's coast, which killed all 189 people aboard, has intensified following a crash of another Boeing 737 Max 8 in Ethiopia earlier this month that killed 157 people.

An earlier report issued by the agency describes technical problems aboard the plane's penultimate flight but does not mention that a third person was in the cockpit along with the pilot and co-pilot.

Tjahjono said NTSC investigators have visited Boeing to carry out a reconstruction of that next-to-last flight.

It will publish results of its investigation in August or September, he said.

A preliminary report from Tjahjono's agency issued in December stopped short of declaring a probable cause of the crash.

But it provided details about the pilots' struggle to fly the highly automated jet and Lion Air's difficulties with fixing sensors on the plane.

The Lion Air plane had issues on several flights before it crashed, with terrifying episodes of loss of altitude possibly related to an automated anti-stall system.

Indonesian investigators say they are analysing conversations recorded by the cockpit voice recorder that was only recovered from the sea bed in January.

Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft have been grounded over safety concerns following the two crashes.