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Ethiopian Airlines Flight Crashes Near Addis Ababa, Killing All 157 Onboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight Crashes Near Addis Ababa, Killing All 157 Onboard
(32 minutes later)
An Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members crashed early Sunday shortly after departing from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, en route to Nairobi, Kenya, the airline said. A spokesman for the airline told state television that there were no survivors.An Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members crashed early Sunday shortly after departing from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, en route to Nairobi, Kenya, the airline said. A spokesman for the airline told state television that there were no survivors.
Flight-tracking websites and news reports said the plane was a version of the 737 MAX 8. A Lion Air flight using the same model of plane went down in Indonesia in October, killing all 189 people on board. Officials are investigating whether changes to the Max 8’s automatic controls might have sent that flight into an unrecoverable nosedive. Flight-tracking websites and news reports said the plane was a version of the 737 Max. A Lion Air flight using the same model of plane went down in Indonesia in October, killing all 189 people onboard. Officials are investigating whether changes to the Max 8’s automatic controls might have sent that flight into an unrecoverable nose-dive.
The flight took off from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. local time and lost contact six minutes later, the airline said. The plane is believed to have gone down near Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, the airline said in a statement. The flight on Sunday took off from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. local time and lost contact six minutes later, the airline said. The plane is believed to have gone down near Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, the airline said in a statement.
The office of Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister, expressed condolences on Twitter, as did President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya. The vertical speed of Flight 302 was unstable after takeoff, according to flight data published by FlightRadar24 on Twitter. Boeing, the maker of the plane, said it was aware of the reports and was monitoring the situation.
Boeing, the maker of the plane, said it was aware of the reports and was monitoring the situation. The flight was carrying passengers from 33 countries. The office of Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister, expressed condolences on Twitter, as did President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya.
There has not been a crash involving Ethiopian Airlines since January 2010, when a Boeing 737 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after it took off from Beirut, Lebanon. None of the 90 people onboard — 82 passengers and eight crew members — survived that crash.
The latest known accident involving the airline was in January 2015 when a Boeing 737-400 cargo aircraft veered off the runway with flat tires after it landed in Accra, Ghana. None of the three crew members onboard were injured.
The Lion Air Max 8 was a brand-new plane, like Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which was delivered to the carrier late last year, according to websites that track commercial fleet updates. Crashes involving new planes are rare. The Lion Air accident also involved a plane that crashed minutes after takeoff.
Investigations by Indonesian and American aviation authorities have determined that the Lion Air plane’s abrupt nose-dive may have been caused by updated Boeing software that is meant to prevent a stall but that can send the plane into a fatal descent if the altitude and angle information being fed into the computer system is incorrect.
The change in the flight control system, which can override manual motions in the Max model, was not adequately explained to pilots, American aviation authorities concluded. Global alerts were sent to notify pilots flying the Max about how to counter the anti-stall system.
Ethiopia, with about 100 million people, is the second-most populous nation in Africa. After elections in March, the new prime minister has embarked on a series of political reforms, chiefly to officially end two decades of hostilities with Eritrea, a neighboring country and longtime rival.
The country’s flagship carrier has undergone a major expansion in past years, more than doubling its staff to 11,000 employees in the past decade, with the goal of easing air travel in a part of the world where flying is notoriously complicated. For instance, it added nonstop flights from Newark to Lomé, Togo, a hub for the airline, that then continued on to Addis Ababa.
In West Africa, Ethiopian is the technical and strategic partner for a relatively new airline, Asky, created with investment from the Economic Community of West African States. Asky offers a web of cross-border flights in West and Central Africa and connects with Ethiopian flights to expand its reach across the continent and beyond.
In Africa, Ethiopian has a reputation for having a newer fleet than other airlines, flights that are mostly on time and accommodating schedules. The airline has ordered 30 737 Max jets, with the first being delivered last year.