Lion Air Boeing 737 Max jet reportedly nearly crashed the day before Dramatic new details were revealed about the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max jet that crashed off Indonesia last October, killing 189 people. A report from Bloomberg says that same plane nearly crashed the day before, but an off-duty pilot who happened to be in the cockpit "told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system, and save the plane." In a separate report, Reuters details the moments before the deadly crash. The cockpit voice recorder shows the pilots struggling to figure out why the jet continued to pitch downward.