ADDIS ABABA, March 13, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Ethiopia said Wednesday it would
send the black boxes from last weekend’s deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash to
Europe for analysis as urgency mounted for answers amid safety concerns for
the Boeing 737 MAX 8.
The second deadly crash involving the plane type in less than six months
prompted governments worldwide to ban the American aerospace giant’s
bestselling jet from their airspace.
The move has heaped pressure on Boeing to provide proof the workhorse is
safe.
In Ethiopia, families of victims were taken to the remote site Wednesday
where the plane smashed into a field with 157 passengers and crew from 35
countries, leaving a deep black crater and tiny scraps of debris.
Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw told AFP the company would
decide by Thursday which country would examine the cockpit voice recorder and
flight data recorder recovered from ill-fated Flight ET 302.
“We are going to send it to Europe, but the country is not specified yet,”
said Asrat.
Another airline spokesman, Biniyam Demssie, said Ethiopia did not have the
equipment to read the black box data, which it is hoped will provide crucial
information about what happened.
The Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 was less than four months old when it
went down six minutes into a flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on Sunday,
disintegrating on impact.
Asrat said families of the victims from Kenya, China, America, and Canada,
as well as diplomatic staff from embassies, were at the crash site.
“Many of them, families and friends, they arrived, and they are on site.”
Experts have pointed out similarities to the crash of an Indonesian Lion
Air jet last October, killing 189 passengers and crew.
– ‘Significant similarities’ –
Both planes reportedly experienced erratic steep climbs and descents as
well as fluctuating airspeeds before crashing shortly after takeoff.
Questions have honed in on an automated anti-stalling system introduced on
the 737 MAX 8, designed to automatically point the nose of the plane downward
if it is in danger of stalling.
According to the flight data recorder, the pilots of Lion Air Flight 610
struggled to control the aircraft as the automated MCAS system repeatedly
pushed the plane’s nose down following takeoff.
The pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines plane reported similar difficulties
before their aircraft plunged into the ground.
Boeing came in for criticism after the Lion Air crash for allegedly
failing to adequately inform 737 pilots about the functioning of the anti-
stalling system. Demssie told AFP the pilots of the doomed flight had been
trained.
For “every new technology, we provide training at Ethiopian Airlines,” he
said.
On Sunday, the company’s CEO Tewolde GebreMariam said captain Yared
Mulugeta Gatechew, 29, was an experienced aviator with more than 8,000 flight
hours.
Tewolde told CNN Wednesday there were “significant similarities” between
the Lion Air and ET 302 crashes. “There are a lot of questions to be answered
on the airplane.”
In a separate interview with BBC, he called for all Boeing 737 MAX models
to be grounded.
– Banned from the skies –
A dozen airlines have grounded the plane, while Lebanon, Egypt, Serbia,
Vietnam, New Zealand and Hong Kong became the latest countries to ban it from
their airspaces Wednesday.
All European Union countries, as well as major hubs such as the United
Arab Emirates and Australia have already done so.
“At this early stage of the related investigation, it cannot be excluded
that similar causes may have contributed to both events,” the EU aviation
agency said.
Low-cost airline Norwegian Air Shuttle has said it will demand financial
compensation from Boeing, as the implications of the mass grounding for the
airline industry remained unclear.
The United States, however, is resisting calls to ground the MAX series,
which is Boeing’s fastest-selling model, with more than 5,000 orders placed
to date from about 100 customers.
“Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no
basis to order grounding the aircraft,” Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
chief Daniel Elwell said in a statement on Tuesday.
There are about 350 MAX 8s in service around the world.
Thomas Anthony, head of the Aviation Safety and Security Program at the
University of Southern California, said increasing automation of planes means
crews have less experience flying manually.
“So it’s not just a mechanical, it is not just a software problem, but it
is a problem of communication and trust,” he said.