ETHIOPIA PLANE MADE A FAILED CLIMB, REVEALS AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL RECORDING

ADDIS ABABA: The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed killing 157 people had an unusually high speed after take-off before it reported problems and asked permission to climb quickly, said a source who has listened to the air traffic control recording.

A voice from the cockpit of the Boeing 737 MAX requested to climb to 14,000 feet above sea level before urgently asking to return, the source told Reuters. The plane vanished from radar at 10,800 feet.

“He said he had a flight control problem. That is why he wanted to climb,” the source said, adding the voice sounded nervous. Pilots typically ask to climb when experiencing problems near the ground in order to gain margin for manoeuvre and avoid any difficult terrain. After one or two minutes into departure, the voice on the recording requested to remain on the same path as the runway and to climb to 14,000 feet, the source said, adding the aircraft’s ground speed after departure was unusually high.

On Sunday, French investigators said they had finished downloading the data contained on both data and voice recorders, or black boxes, of the plane. Ethiopia’s transport minister Dagmawit Moges said the data indicated “clear similarities” between last Sunday’s crash of the Ethiopian Airlines jet and the October crash of an Indonesian Lion Air plane. A preliminary report into the crash will be released in “30 days”, he said.

Thousands mourned the Ethiopian victims of the crash on Sunday, accompanying 17 empty caskets draped in the national flag through the streets of the capital Addis Ababa as some victims’ relatives fainted. Officials began delivering bags of earth to family members of the 157 victims instead of their remains as the identification process could take too long. AGENCIES