Source: NBC News
The Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed shortly after takeoff on Sunday, killing all 157 people aboard, is the same make and model as the plane that crashed off Indonesia last year with 189 deaths, but officials and safety experts warned against rushing to link the incidents.
Officials lost contact with Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner flying from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, at 8:44 a.
m. (1:44 a.m. ET), authorities said.That was about six minutes after the plane took off from Bole International Airport, they said. Tewolde GebreMariam, the airline’s chief executive, said that the captain reported “difficulties” and asked to return to the airport but that then the plane “was lost from the radar — it disappeared.”
The Ethiopian Airlines jet had been in service for only four months and had no known technical issues, GebreMariam said.
March 10, 201901:41
In late October, Lion Air Flight JT610 — also a Boeing 737 Max 8, which had been in service for only 2½ months — crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.
Indonesian authorities said that contact with Flight JT610 was lost after 13 minutes and that the captain reported a “flight control problem.” Pilots flying the same plane a day earlier had experienced a similar problem, authorities said.
Weather was good the days of both crashes.
Beyond that, it’s inappropriate to draw any comparisons so early in the investigation of Sunday’s crash, said Capt. John Cox, an aviation safety management specialist at the University of Southern California who is an aviation analyst for NBC News.
“The Lion Air jet had been experiencing mechanical problems for the four days prior to the accident,” said Cox, a former executive air safety chairman…
The post Jet in Ethiopian Airlines crash is same model that went down off Indonesia appeared first on FeedBox.