Part 2/9:
On the morning of February 11, 2006, 146 passengers and six crew members boarded the Boeing 737-300 in Jakarta, Indonesia, for a two-hour flight to Makassar. The captain, a veteran of 41 years with over 7,000 hours of experience, was seated next to a first officer aged 33 with 3,000 flying hours. Despite their credentials and familiarity with the route, they were unprepared for the troubles that lay ahead.
Upon performing pre-flight checks, the pilots discovered a fault in one of the plane’s navigation systems. Instead of grounding the aircraft, maintenance personnel replaced the faulty inertial reference unit (IRU). The engineers had logged 18 issues with the navigation system in the prior months, hinting at a culture of cost-cutting measures that prioritized expedience over safety.