Ethiopian Airlines CEO Notes 'Clear Similarity' Between Boeing 737 Max Crashes

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published March 16, 2019 | 02:35 AM

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th March, 2019) Tewolde GebreMariam, the CEO of the Ethiopian Airlines, whose Nairobi-bound Boeing 737 MAX plane crashed last week, suggested, in an interview with Xinhua, that the tragic accident was similar to last year's crash of a jet of the same series, belonging to Indonesian carrier Lion Air.

The Ethiopian Airlines plane catastrophe happened last Sunday, claiming lives of 157 people, minutes after the aircraft departed from the Addis Ababa airport. The Lion Air plane, in its turn, crashed last October shortly after taking off from Jakarta. All 189 people on board the aircraft were killed. GebreMariam has told CNN that the pilot of the Ethiopian Airlines plane reported "flight control problems" minutes before the crash.

"[The crash] looks like the Lion Air, because the flight only lasted for six minutes ... It was a very, very short period of time ... There is clear similarity between our crash and the Lion Air crash," GebreMariam said.

Earlier this week, the air carrier said that the black boxes of the crashed plane had been sent to France to be analyzed.

GebreMariam told Xinhua that specialists from the US National Transportation Safety Board, Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau, US Federation Aviation Administration, Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines were working hard to find the cause of the incident, adding that it would take "some days" to analyze the devices.

"There is the voice part on one hand and there is also data part on the other hand," GebreMariam explained.

In the wake of Sunday's crash in Ethiopia, aviation authorities and airlines around the world have either grounded all 737 MAX 8 series aircraft or closed their airspace to them.

Boeing, in its turn, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had "full confidence" in the safety of its 737 MAX aircraft but supported the decision to temporarily ground the entire fleet of 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 series planes in the wake of the deadly crash in Ethiopia.