Report puts blame on control system
Investigators with the U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board look over debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 on March 12, 2019, in Bishoftu, Ethiopia
Ethiopian investigators are mostly blaming Boeing for last year’s crash of a Ethiopian Airlines jet shortly after takeoff, saying in an interim report Monday that there were design failures in the jet and inadequate training for pilots.
The update from Ethiopian investigators — timed to beat the anniversary of the crash on March 10, 2019 — pointed to the role played by a new flight-control system that Boeing installed on the 737 Max and which repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down.
The system, called MCAS, overwhelmed the pilots’ attempts to control the plane. When it triggered for the fourth and final time, the pilots fought back by pulling on their control columns with up to 180 pounds of force, but the nose of the plane sank even more and the jet flew even faster.
Shortly before impact, the plane was streaking downward at 575 mph — at a rate of more than 5,000 feet per minute — with its nose tilted down at a 40degree angle, according to the interim report from Ethiopia’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
All 157 people on board were killed when flight 302 crashed into a field six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa. Every Max jet worldwide was grounded within days of the crash — the second involving a Boeing Max in less than five months.