Families who lost loved ones aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 visited the crash site on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of the tragedy, a day after interim results of a probe focused on faulty systems on the Boeing 737 MAX jet.
The area of the disaster, about 40 miles southeast of Addis Ababa, the capital, was closed to the press as buses brought family of the victims to the commemoration, sponsored by Ethiopian Airlines and Boeing, the maker of the jet.
Washington Post reports that big buses and smaller vehicles arrived on a newly built dirt road for the service where large tents have been erected. Flight 302 took off from Addis Ababa airport the morning of March 10 last year and the pilots quickly reported problems and sought permission to return to the airport. They struggled but failed to control the plane, which six minutes after takeoff hit the barren patch of land.
The Ethiopian crash came almost five months after a strikingly similar crash in Indonesia of the same model aircraft. Together the two crashes led to a grounding of all Boeing 737 Max jets, more than 380 planes used by more than 50 airlines around the world. Boeing initially expressed confidence that the planes would soon be returned to service, but no date has been set. In an interim report released Monday, Ethiopian investigators mostly blame Boeing for the crash, saying there were design failures in the flight-control system which repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down. The report also said Boeing had offered inadequate training for pilots.
Via Washington Post
