Ethiopian Airlines Flight Crashes with All 157 People On Board
According to the latest report, there were passengers from 33 different nationalities aboard the flight. Out of the 149 passengers, four were Indian.
An Ethiopian Airlines flight, Boeing 737 Max Passenger Jet crashed killing all 157 on board including 8 crewmembers. The flight was flying from Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa to Nairobi. The Flight ET 302 left Bole Airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 am local time but lost contact with the control tower soon after at 8:44 am and crashed near the Bishoftu town, 62 kilometres southeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
The airline immediately started several emergency hotline numbers for families and friends of victims to contact and issued a statement, “It is believed that there were 149 passengers and eight crew on board the flight but we are currently confirming the details of the passenger manifest for the flight”. According to the latest report, there were passengers from 33 different nationalities aboard the flight. Out of the 149 passengers, four were Indian.
The CEO of the carrier Tewolde GebreMariam, said this was a very sad and tragic day. When asked whether the pilot had made any distress call or not before the crash, Tewolde said, “the pilot mentioned that he had difficulties and he wants to return. He was given clearance to turn around”. He also informed that the Ethiopian and American investigators would now probe the crash.
State-owned Ethiopian Airlines is one of the biggest carriers by fleet size in the continent. Last year it has carried about 10.6 million passengers. Ethiopian Airlines last major crash was in January 2010, when the flight plunged into the Mediterranean shortly after takeoff from Beirut's airport, killing all 90 people on board.
The airline said the plane was a Boeing 737 800 Max, the same model aircraft involved in the Indonesian Lion Air, that crash in October 2018, 13 minutes after takeoff from capital Jakarta where all the 189 occupants were killed, when the plane plunged into the sea shortly after take off.
The Max model is the latest version of Boeing’s workhorse 737 models, which is also the world’s most popular commercial aircraft. Boeing issued a statement after the accident and said, “it is closely monitoring the situation”.
Ethiopian Airlines is also the continent’s largest airline in terms of destinations and passengers served and it aims to become the gateway to the whole of Africa. The airline has services for over 100 destinations worldwide, including flights to Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
