Ethiopian Airlines crash kills at least 150; second Boeing 737 disaster in months

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — An Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying more than 150 people crashed early Sunday shortly after departing from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, en route to Nairobi, Kenya, the airline said, killing everyone onboard.

The plane was identified by its manufacturer, Boeing, as one of its newest models, a 737 Max 8. The cause of the crash was unclear, but a Lion Air flight using the same model of plane went down in Indonesia in October and killed 189 people.

Officials are investigating whether changes to the Max 8’s automatic controls might have sent that flight into an unrecoverable nose-dive. The airline said the 737 had been subjected to a “rigorous” maintenance check in February.

Flight 302 was carrying passengers from at least 35 countries, according to the airline. The dead included 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians, eight each from the United States, China and Italy, and seven each from France and Britain, the airline said.

The office of Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister, expressed on Twitter “profound sadness at the loss of life,” as did President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya.

The airline said in a statement that 149 passengers and eight crew members were aboard the flight. The US Embassy in Addis Ababa confirmed that Americans were onboard and said it was working with the Ethiopian government and the airline to determine their identities.

The flight on Sunday took off in good weather from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38am local time and lost contact six minutes later, the airline said. The plane went down near Bishoftu, about 35 miles southeast of Addis Ababa.

Tewolde GebreMariam, chief executive officer of Ethiopian Airlines, said that it was too early to determine a cause or rule anything out, adding that a team from the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States would be arriving shortly to work with civil aviation authorities in Ethiopia and officials from Boeing.

The NTSB said that it would be sending a four-person team.

There has not been a crash involving Ethiopian Airlines since January 2010, when a Boeing 737 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after it took off from Beirut. None of the 90 people onboard that flight survived.

© 2019 New York Times News Service