Amid media speculation over the airworthiness of the aircraft, the transport minister suspended Lion Airs technical director and three other officers on Wednesday to facilitate the crash investigation.Another passenger on JT43 described, in a talkshow broadcast by Indonesias TVOne, a turbulent flight during which the seatbelt signs were never turned off.Herson, chief of the airport authority for the Bali-Nusa Tenggara area, told Reuters that after the call the pilot updated the control tower to say that the plane was flying normally and he would not return to the airport as requested."The Lion plane requested to return back to Bali five minutes after take-off, but then the pilot said the problem had been resolved and he was going to go ahead to Jakarta."The captain himself was confident enough to fly to Jakarta from Denpasar," said Herson, who goes by one name, speaking by phone from Bali and referring to the resort islands airport."When the plane took off, it climbed and then went down. The pilot double-checked to ensure that they could fly," he said. It rose again, and then dropped again violently, shaking," said Diah Mardani.A Lion Air spokesman declined to comment when asked about the distress call on the earlier flight, citing the ongoing crash investigation.". "Everyone in the plane shouted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest), Subhanallah (Glory to God).The budget airlines CEO, Edward Sirait, said earlier this week that a technical problem had occurred on the Denpasar-Jakarta flight but it had been resolved "according to procedure".

The pilot of another plane that was approaching Bali just after the Lion Air jet had taken off said he was ordered to circle above the airport and listened in to a radio conversation between the Lion Air pilot and air traffic controllers.National Transport Safety Committee (NTSC) deputy chief Haryo Satmiko told reporters on Tuesday there were technical problems on the flight, including unreliable airspeed readings.Divers on Thursday retrieved a flight data recorder from the plane that lay shattered on the muddy sea floor off the coast of Jakarta. They are a step down from Mayday, which signals severe distress.Herson, the airport authority chief in Bali, said the aircraft had encountered a "speed and altimeter" problem but the captain was confident that it was airworthy and pressed on.Jakarta: The pilot of a Lion Air flight from Indonesias Bali island on Sunday made a distress call minutes after take-off due to technical problems, but they were overcome and he pushed on to Jakarta. We recited every prayer we knew.The Denpasar-Jakarta flight landed at the Indonesian capitals airport at 10:55 pm local time on Sunday.Two passengers from Sundays flight posted on Instagram, reporting that they had been concerned about problems with the air conditioning system and cabin lighting before the plane left Bali nearly three hours late.According to data from FlightRadar24, the jet displayed unusual variations in altitude and airspeed in the first several minutes of flight - including an 875-foot drop over 27 seconds when it would normally be ascending - before stabilising and flying on to Jakarta.The same Boeing 737 MAX jet took off at 6:20 am the next morning, bound for Bangka island, off Sumatra, and plunged into the sea 13 minutes later.."Pilots use Pan-Pan calls to flag urgent situations.The suspended technicians "issued the recommendations for that (final) flight", the ministry said in a press release."Because of the Pan-Pan call, we were told to hold off, circling the airport in the air," said the pilot, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.However, the pilots kept the plane at a maximum altitude of 28,000 feet compared with 36,000 feet on the same route earlier in the week. Just before the crash, the pilot had made a request to return to base.. they updated and flew to Jakarta. It did not say how many technicians had been suspended. The NTSC said it would examine the device to get a clearer picture of what happened on the flight from Bali on Sunday in addition to the flight Commercial Air Conditioners Manufacturers that crashed on Monday. The same jet crashed on another flight hours later, killing all 189 people on board.ERRATIC FLIGHTDuring its earlier flight from Bali on Sunday, JT43, the aircraft flew erratically and its airspeed readings were unreliable, according to an accident investigator and a flight tracking website."He requested to return to the airport for RTB (return to base) but