Indonesia offers to assist Ethiopia’s investigation
NAIROBI (AP/Reuters) – The head of Indonesia’s national transport safety agency, Soerjanto Thahjono, offered Monday to assist the Ethiopian investigation into the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane.
Like the Ethiopian Airlines crash minutes after the jet’s takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday, which killed all 157 people on board, the Lion Air jet had erratic speed in the few minutes it was in the air.
The crash put global aviation authorities on alert.
Sunday’s flight left Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. (0538 GMT), before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8:44 a.m.
“There are no survivors,” the airline tweeted alongside a picture of Chief Executive Tewolde Gebre Mariam holding up a piece of debris inside a large crater at the crash site.
“The pilot mentioned that he had difficulties and that he wanted to return,” Tewolde told a news conference. Passengers from 33 countries were aboard.
The dead included Kenyan, Ethiopian, American, Canadian, French, Chinese, Egyptian, Swedish, British, Dutch, Indian, Slovakian, Austrian, Swedish, Russian, Moroccan, Spanish, Polish, and Israeli citizens.
At least four worked for the United Nations, the airline said, and the UN’s World Food Program director confirmed his organization had lost staff in the accident.
Ethiopian Airlines has grounded its Boeing Co. 737 MAX 8 fleet until further notice, the airline said on its Twitter account on Monday, a day after a crash killed all 157 people on board one of its planes of the same type.
“Although we don’t yet know the cause of the crash, we had to decide to ground the particular fleet as extra safety precaution,” the airline said.
Ethiopian Airlines has a fleet of four 737 MAX 8 jets, not counting the one that crashed on Sunday, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.
China on Monday ordered its airlines to suspend operations of their 737 MAX 8 jets by 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) following the crash in Ethiopia, the second of a Boeing 737 MAX jet since one operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air crashed in October.