SEE Nationalities aboard the crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight en route to Kenya #ethiopianairlines

RIP...So sad......

The final moments of the doomed Ethiopian airline which crashed and killed 157 people n board, have been revealed.

Workers collect wreckage from the crashed Ethiopia Airlines jet today

A domed Ethiopian Airlines flight swerved and dipped and was belching smoke from the rear before it crashed with 157 on board, a witness said today.

He also said the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet was making a strange noise before hitting the ground with a "large boom" and a shower of flaming luggage.

Crash investigators today recovered the black box flight recorder from a crater the size of a basketball court.

They hope it will yield clues to why the brand-new plane crashed yesterday killing all on board including seven Brits.

Eyewitness Gebeyehu Fikadu, 25, told CNN he saw it come down while collecting firewood with other locals.

He said: "I was in the mountain nearby when I saw the plane reach the mountain before turning around with a lot of smoke coming from the back and then crashed at this site.

"It crashed with a large boom. When it crashed luggage and clothes came burning down.

"Before it crashed the plane was swerving and dipping with a lot of smoke coming from the back and also making a very loud unpleasant sound before hitting the ground."

The black box flight recorder is recovered from the crash site

FINAL MOMENTS

Last night the plane's harrowing final seconds were revealed by flight radar data, which showed it repeatedly climbed, fell and climbed again soon after takeoff from Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport.

Aviation experts said this "unstable vertical speed" is extremely unusual and planes usually climb steadily.

Crash investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Board will arrive tomorrow to help piece together what went wrong, the US ambassador to Ethiopia said.

Meanwhile Indonesia became the fourth country to ban all Max 8 jets from flying over safety concerns. Another plane of the same model crashed near Jakarta in October.

Passengers' clothing and personal effects gathered into a pile at the crash site today

Aviation expert Mary Schiavo said Boeing should ground all the jets until they know what went wrong.

She said: "I think Boeing should take the lead -- Boeing should do it."

The 737 Max series, introduced only two years ago, is Boeing's fastest selling model.

American Airlines, which has ordered more than 100, said it has "full confidence" in the planes but Beoing's share price plunged ten per cent following the disaster.

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Source: The Sun UK

Photos from the scene where an Ethiopian airline crashed killing all passengers have been revealed.

Scene of the Ethiopian Airline crash

 

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger jet to Nairobi crashed early on Sunday, killing 149 passengers and eight crew, the airline said, the same model that crashed during a Lion Air flight in Indonesia in October.

 

Sunday’s flight left Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 am (0538 GMT), before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8:44 am.

 

“The group CEO who is at the scene right now deeply regrets to confirm there are no survivors,” the airline tweeted alongside a picture of Tewolde GebreMariam in a suit holding a piece of debris inside a large crater.

 

 

Passengers from 33 countries were aboard, said Tewolde in a news conference. The dead included Kenyan, Ethiopian, American, Canadian, French, Chinese, Egyptian, Swedish, British and Dutch citizens.

 

At Nairobi airport, many relatives of passengers were left waiting at the gate for hours, with no information from airport authorities. Some learned of the crash from journalists.

“We’re just waiting for my mum. We’re just hoping she took a different flight or was delayed. She’s not picking up her phone,” said Wendy Otieno, clutching her phone and weeping.

 

 

Robert Mutanda, 46, was waiting for his brother-in-law, a Canadian citizen.

 

“No, we haven’t seen anyone from the airline or the airport,” he told Reuters at 1pm, more than three hours after the flight was lost. “Nobody has told us anything, we are just standing here hoping for the best.”

 

 

Kenyan officials did not arrive at the airport until 1:30, five hours after the plane went down.

 

James Macharia, the cabinet secretary for transport, said he heard about the crash via Twitter.

 

 

 

-Reuters