Same crash pattern
Ethiopia, Indonesia jet tragedies have ‘clear similarities’
PRELIMINARY information from the flight data recorder of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed a week ago and killed 157 people shows “clear similarities” with an earlier disaster involving the same kind of Boeing aircraft in Indonesia.
The disclosure from Ethiopia’s transport minister came as thousands marched in the capital Addis Ababa, accompanying 17 empty coffins in a funeral for the Ethiopian victims of Flight 302.
The coffins were empty because authorities have said recovering and identifying the remains will take months.
The crashes of Ethiopian Flight 302 on March 10 and a Lion Air plane in Indonesia in October – both Boeing 737 7 MAX 8 jetliners – have e prompted Australia, the US,S, China and other countries to o ground the aircraft. The flight recorders from
m Flight 302, which went down
n shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa for Nairobi, were recovered “in a good
d condition that enabled us to extract almost all the data in-side”, Transport Ministerr Dagmawit Moges said.
Information from the flight data recorder indicated “clear similarities” between both crashes, she said. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder were sent to Paris for analysis by the French air accident investigation agency BEA. Ms M Moges did not elaboratelb on what the similarities were.
The US Federal Aviation Administration already has said satellite-based tracking data showed that the movements of Flight 302 were similar to those of Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed off the coast of Indonesia, killing 189 people.
Both planes suffered erratic altitude changes that could indicate the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Shortly after their takeoffs, both crews tried to return to the airports. It is suspected faulty sensors and software contributed to the
m crashes.
Ms Moges said the Ethiopian Government intended to release detailed findings within a month.
At the memorial service, some of the relatives who marched behind the flagdraped coffins were overcome with grief and fainted.
The service came a day after officials began delivering 1kg bags of scorched earth from the crash site to family members of the victims because of the problems with identifying the remains.