Ethiopian Airlines crash
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REUTERS
- Posted On 13-03-2019, 01:02AM
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa for Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board. Coming five months after another fatal crash involving a Boeing 737 MAX 8 passenger jet in Indonesia, Ethiopia’s disaster has caused alarm in the international aviation industry.
The plane took off at 8:38 a.m. (0538 GMT) on March 10 and lost contact with the control tower at 8:44 a.m. It crashed about 50km (30 miles) southeast of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
A Reuters analysis of flight speed and altitude data, released by the flight tracking website Flightradar24, indicates that the pilots were unable to recover after losing altitude. Addis Ababa is a hot and high-altitude airport whose thinner air requires extra effort from an aircraft’s engines.
Data reveals that pilots pushed the aircraft to a speed of 380 knots but the plane failed to climb more than 1,000 feet above ground in an area surrounded by high terrain. In the first couple hundred seconds, flight ET302's recorded speed was greater than the one of the previous days' flights.
