Ethiopian Airlines flight crashes killing 157

COLOMBO (News 1st) - Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 bound for Nairobi crashed earlier today(March 10) with 157 people, killing all on board. According to a statement issued by the airline, the flight took off at 8:38 a.m. from Addis Ababa and lost contact six minutes later, crashing near the city of Bishoftu less than 40 miles to the southeast of Addis Ababa. The statement further noted that the search and rescue operations are in progress and it is believed that there were 149 passengers and 8 crew members on board at the time of the crash. The airline added that there were 33 different nationalities on board. Swedish flight-tracking website flight radar 24 said that this Boeing 737 “had unstable vertical speed” after take off. The airline also set up emergency hotline numbers for families and friends of victims. The Ethiopian Prime Minister’s office issued a tweet expressing its “deepest condolences” to the families of those who lost loved ones on the flight. On a separate note, It was revealed that the plane that crashed was a Boeing 737 800 Max, the same model of aircraft involved in the Indonesian Lion Air crash in October in which the plane plunged into the sea shortly after take off. The Max is the newest version of Boeing’s workhorse 737 model, the world’s most popular commercial airliner. On October 28th 2018 a Lion Air flight JT610, flying from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang on the island of Bangka, lost contact with air traffic control about 13 minutes after it took off, shortly after its pilot had asked to return to base. Flight data showed that it made a sudden, sharp dive into the sea. This domestic plane was carrying 189 people when it crashed into the sea off Jakarta while en route to an Indonesian tin-mining region. Following the crash of Lion Air flight 610 in Indonesia, Boeing issued an emergency notice that an erroneous sensor input could “cause the flight crew to have difficulty controlling the airplane, "leading to possible impact with terrain.” This model of the 737 lacks a common override feature that allows pilots to reliably pull planes out of nosedives.