I think it's just an example of a common news article pattern: put the most memorable and/or important finding or anecdote at the top, and end with the second most memorable.

It's not a cliffhanger. It's an anecdote – a FAA employee asking what seems like a seemingly-too-basic question "days after the Lion Air crash". The Lion Air crash happened last year, and the body of this article is ostensibly the answer to that employee's outburst.