Clue from space: Both crashes linked
porary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.”
The FAA a l o ng wit h t he National Transportation Safety Board, the Ethiopian civil aviation authority, and Boeing, have been investigating the crash at the site, some 60 km (around 40 miles) outside the Ethiopian capital.
On Thursday morning in Addis Ababa, grieving relatives of some of the 157 victims of Sunday’s air disaster boarded buses for a three-hour journey to the crash site. WASHINGTON: The first evidence of a link between two Boeing 737 Max crashes came from space.
A new satellite network capable of tracking planes across the globe captured the flight path of the Boeing 737 Max that crashed on Sunday.
The data was critical in persuading the US to join the rest of the world in grounding the jet.
The six-minute flight of the Ethiopian Airlines plane convinced the FAA that it was close enough to what preceded the October 29 crash of another Max off the coast of Indonesia to warrant concern.
After reviewing the data, “it became clear - to all parties - that the track of the Ethiopian Airlines flight was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight,” FAA’S acting administrator Daniel Elwell said.
Canada’s transport minister Marc Garneau also cited satellite tracking as the reason his country joined more than 50 other nations in grounding Max.
The data was provided by Aireon, which was formed in 2012 by Iridium Communications and Nav Canada.
The company shared the information with the US National Transportation Safety Board, the FAA as well as European and African aviation authorities.