ADDIS ABABA — An Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa, killing all on board yesterday.
The airline said 149 passengers and eight crew members were on flight ET302 from the Ethiopian capital to Nairobi in Kenya.
The crash happened at 08h44 (local time), six minutes after the months-old Boeing 737 Max-8 took off.
The cause of the disaster is not yet clear. However, the pilot had reported difficulties and had asked to return to Addis Ababa, the airline said.
“At this stage, we cannot rule out anything,” Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told reporters at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa.
“We cannot also attribute the cause to anything because we will have to comply with the international regulation to wait for the investigation.”
An eyewitness at the scene told the BBC there was an intense fire as the aircraft hit the ground.
“The blast and the fire were so strong that we couldn’t get near it,” he said. “Everything is burnt down.”
The first word of the crash came when prime minister Abiy Ahmed expressed his “deepest condolences” on Twitter.
In an earlier statement, the airline said that search and rescue operations were underway near the crash site around the town of Bishoftu, which is 60km (37 miles) south-east of the capital.
Gebremariam told the news conference that passengers from more than 30 countries were on board the flight.
He said they included 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians, eight Italians, eight Chinese, eight Americans, seven Britons, seven French citizens, six Egyptians, five Dutch citizens, four Indians and four from Slovakia.
Three Austrians, three Swedes, three Russians, two Moroccans, two Spaniards, two Poles and two Israelis were also on the flight.
There was also one passenger each from Belgium, Indonesia, Somalia, Norway, Serbia, Togo, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Yemen.
Four people held United Nations passports, the airline said, and it believed some passengers could have been heading to a session of the UN Environment Assembly which begins in Nairobi today.
The Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft is relatively new to the skies, having been launched in 2016. It was added to the Ethiopian Airlines fleet in July last year.
Boeing said it was “deeply saddened” by the crash and offered to send a team to provide technical assistance.
Another plane of the same model was involved in a crash five months ago when a Lion Air flight crashed into the sea near Indonesia with nearly 190 people on board.
Investigators say the pilots of that aircraft had appeared to struggle with an automated system designed to keep the plane from stalling – a new feature of the Boeing 737 Max.
The anti-stalling system repeatedly forced the plane’s nose down, despite efforts by pilots to correct this, findings suggest. – BBC News.
