Originally Posted by
JPJP
I found the underlined quote from the article curious. Either they have an AOA Indicator on the PFD, or they were able to get into the Maintenance side of the FMS, or a maintenance person on the flight deck plugged into the Mx port. An AOA Indicator is an option and it does read up to a maximum value of + 21 degrees. That would seem to be an extreme value to see inflight after the aircraft was just returned to service (‘fixed’).
Since this has been a point of interest from the outset, I asked a journalist friend who's covering this story in Jakarta for a major US paper: Did Lion purchase the cockpit AoA indicator option for the PFD?
His reply was: "[T]here was no standalone AoA indicator in the cockpit" on JT610.
So perhaps prior to the incident flight, as JPJP suggests, "they were able to get into the Maintenance side of the FMS, or a maintenance person on the flight deck plugged into the Mx port." That seems like a valid inference if the information in the flightglobal article is correct.
This isn't my contact's first time covering an Indonesian air disaster, and he's got a very good track record. So take this data point for what it's worth.