Last minutes of doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet emerge
Details of the last minutes of the Ethiopian Airline jet that crashed earlier this month killing all 157 people on board have emerged.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Boeing 737 Max began to run into difficulties shortly after take off on the 10 March flight between Addis Ababa and Nairobi in Kenya.
Citing sources with knowledge of the matter, the report said the plane’s nose began to pitch down a minute after takeoff when the plane was just 450 feet above the ground.
First Officer Ahmednur Mohamed radioed the control tower reporting a “flight control problem” as the captain Yared Getachew struggled to climb.
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The report said: “The oscillation became a wild bounce, then a dive”.
“Pitch up, pitch up!” one pilot said as the plane dived towards the ground.
The plane crashed into a field 30 miles from the runway just six minutes after take off.
The last moments of the doomed flight appear to indicate problems with the new plane’s automatic anti-stall system which has also been implicated in the downing of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia that killed all 189 people on board in October.
Read more: Tui warns of €200m hit after grounding of Boeing 737 Max jets
Initial reports on the conclusions of the investigators examining the Ethiopian Airlines crash suggest that the anti-stall system is being treated as a possible cause of the crash.
An official report into the disaster by Ethiopian authorities is expected to be released imminently.
Boeing has issued a software update to correct possible problems with the system, but the model remains grounded across the world.
“We are going to do everything that we can do to ensure that accidents like these never happen again,” Mike Sinnett, Boeing’s vice president for product strategy and development said.
Last week travel operator Tui said it had taken a €200m (£172.5m) hit from the grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max planes.
Underlying earnings before interest tax and amortisation are now expected to drop 17 per cent on last year’s €1.18bn as it rakes in just €977m for its 2019 financial year.
TUI has about 150 planes, of which 15 are grounded 737 jets. A further eight are scheduled for delivery by the end of May 2019.