A  headline in The New York Times (March 21) said: ‘Confusion, then prayer, in cockpit of doomed Lion Air jet’.

“As the seconds ticked by on the doomed Indonesian flight, the pilot handed the controls to his co-pilot and flipped through the pages of a technical manual, trying to figure out what was happening.

“Then, as the nose of the Lion Air jet 610 repeatedly bucked downward, Harvino, the co-pilot began to pray... “God is great”. Mr Harvino, an experienced Indonesian aviator, then recited a verse asking God for a miracle. But there was no miracle when the brand-new Boeing 737 Max 8 (with 189 people on board) dived into the Java Sea... with such force that parts of the fuselage turned into powder.”