2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash: Ethiopian investigators confirm technical failure
A wreckage of the Ethiopian Airlines plane not far from the town of Bishoftu, southwest of Addis Ababa, on March 10, 2019. REUTERS / Tiksa Negeri
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Ethiopia has finalized its report on the accident of the Boeing 737 MAX of its airline Ethiopian airlines and concludes that the crash was indeed due to a technical failure.
On March 10, 2019, flight ET 302 bound for Nairobi crashed in a field near the Ethiopian capital.
All 157 passengers and crew lost their lives.
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With our correspondent in the region,
Albane Thirouard
With the crash, five months earlier, of a Boeing 737 MAX of the Indonesian company Lion Air killing 189 people, the two tragedies plunged
Boeing into the worst crisis in its history
.
It is therefore indeed a technical failure which is at the origin of the crash, according to the report presented Friday by the Ethiopian Minister of Transport.
The full report has not yet been made public, but it states that “
a sensor on the left of the aircraft sent erroneous data to the flight control system just after takeoff.
It was these messages that triggered the MCAS system, an anti-stall safety device, which made the plane nose down, causing the pilot to lose control
.
The document also points out that the crew members were qualified to fly.
Following this crash, by 2019 all 737 MAX aircraft had been grounded and their delivery and production suspended.
The planes were only allowed to return to service at the end of 2020, after Boeing made corrections to these devices, including the MCAS system.
Ethiopian Airlines, however, only reinstated them last February.
Boeing estimates the cost of this crisis at more than 20 billion dollars.
In January 2021, the American aircraft manufacturer reached an agreement with American justice, agreeing to pay more than 2 billion dollars, including a compensation fund of 500 million for the relatives of the victims of the two accidents.
Read also: Ethiopian Airlines crash: emotion and many questions
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