An Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet bound for Nairobi crashed minutes after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board and raising questions about the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 , a new model that also crashed in Indonesia in October .
Sunday’s flight left Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. (0538 GMT), before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8:44 a.m.
“ There are no survivors ,” the airline tweeted alongside a picture of Chief Executive Tewolde GebreMariam holding up a piece of debris inside a large crater at the crash site.
“ The pilot mentioned that he had difficulties and that he wanted to return ,” Tewolde told a news conference.
The dead included Kenyan , Ethiopian , American , Canadian , French , Chinese , Egyptian , Swedish , British , Dutch , Indian , Slovakian , Austrian , Swedish , Russian , Moroccan , Spanish , Polish , and Israeli citizens.
Twenty-one staff from at least five U.N. and affiliated organizations died
, including the World Food Program , the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR , the International Telecommunications Union , the U.N. Environment Program , the World Bank , and the International Organisation on Migration .
In Nairobi , a major hub for aid workers and diplomats, a summit opened with a moment of silence and tears for the U.N. members killed. In New York, the 15-member U.N. Security Council also stood to remember the dead.
The aircraft, a 737 MAX 8 , is the same model that crashed into the Java Sea shortly after take-off from Jakarta on Oct 29 , killing all 189 people on board the Lion Air flight . The cause of that crash is still under investigation.
A senior U.S. government official said it was too early to tell if there was any direct connection between the two accidents , but that reviewing the issue would be among the top priorities for investigators.
The 737 is the world’s best selling modern passenger aircraft and is seen as one of the industry’s most reliable.
A preliminary report into the October crash focused on airline maintenance and training and technical questions about the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor.
Boeing is working on a software patch on the system while insisting cockpit procedures were already in place to deal safely with problems the Lion Air crew experienced.
Ethiopian’s new aircraft had no recorded technical problems
and the pilot had an “excellent” flying record, Tewolde said.
“We received the airplane on November 15, 2018 . It has flown more than 1,200 hours. It had flown from Johannesburg earlier this morning,” he said.
Under international rules, responsibility for leading the crash investigation lies with Ethiopia but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ) will also participate because the plane was designed and built in the United States .
Investigators in Ethiopia found two black box recorders on Monday that will help piece together the final moments of an Ethiopian Airlines plane before it plunged, trailing smoke and debris.
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