Ethiopian Airlines flight bound for Nairobi crashes with 157 on board

Ethio­pian Airlines flight 302 bound for Nairobi crashed Sunday with 157 people on board with no information yet on casualties.
According to a statement from the airline, the flight took off at 8:38 a.m. and lost contact six minutes later, crashing near the city of Bishoftu about 40 miles away.
“At this time search and rescue operations are in progress and we have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties,” said a statement from the airline.
The prime minister’s office issued a tweet expressing its “deepest condolences” to the families of those who lost people on the flight.
The airline said the plane was a Boeing 737 800 MAX, the same model aircraft involved in the Indonesian Lion Air crash in



which the plane plunged into the sea shortly after take off.

Ethio­pian Airlines announced the acquisition of the brand new Max aircraft in July.
The Max model is the newest version of Boeing’s workhorse 737 model, the world’s most popular commercial airline.
Following the crash of Lion Air flight 610 in Indonesia, Boeing issued an emergency notice that an erroneous sensor input could “cause the flight crew to have difficulty controlling the airplane,” leading to “possible impact with terrain.”
This model plan lacks a common override feature that allows pilots to reliably pull planes out of nose dives.
Ethio­pian Airlines is one of the continent’s biggest carriers with ambitions to becoming the gateway to Africa.