Last Sunday morning, the whole world was in shock learning the crash of Ethiopian four month old brand new Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft flight ET 302 en route to Nairobi shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa. Following this bad news, questions are being raised whether Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft is safe or not as the same aircraft of the Indonesia’s Lion Air went down last October.
Aviation Analyst Alex Macheras says the 737 MAX is the brand new updated version of the Boeing 737. “The MAX is in service all around the world. Airlines such as the Ethiopian Airlines are using this aircraft, as it is the latest, the most fuel-efficient, shortrange Boeing aircraft on the market. Macheras says new aircraft “do have their hiccups” but that is not to say they are unsafe or more prone to being involved in accidents.
“There are certain advisories for lots of new aircraft and that’s perfectly normal as they enter the market place,” he adds. The Boeing 737 MAX was initiated in response to Airbus’s A320 Neo. Both planes feature modifications to make the aircraft more fuel-efficient.
“It’s a very safe aircraft,” Macheras says, “but of course this accident will send jitters across the industry.” Kyle Bailey, an Aviation Analyst and Pilot, says the pilot’s distress call signaled that the plane may have gone down due to a “controllability issue” than an explosion.
“That may lead me to believe that the problem wasn’t imperatively serious,” he tells international media from New Jersey. “Typically in major disasters when crashes happen, when there are explosions, usually there is no communication from the pilots,” Bailey adds. “The pilots are so focused on that catastrophic event, that they don’t have time to call air traffic control. The fact that there was a call made to air traffic control, in this instance, makes us believe that it was a controllability issue that they were struggling for control.”
“Ethiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world. At this stage we cannot rule out anything,” CEO Tewolde Gebremariam tells reporters having visited the crash site. He also says that the “brand-new airplane” had flown 1,200 hours and had arrived from Johannesburg on Sunday morning.
“There were no defects prior to the flight, so it is hard to see any parallels with the Lion Air crash yet,” he says adding “The pilot was named as Senior Captain Yared Mulugeta who had a commendable performance with more than 8,000 hours in the air.” The Ethiopian plane was new, delivered to the airline in November.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 was one of 30 meant for the airline, Boeing said in July. The jet’s last maintenance was on Feb. 4, and it had flown just 1,200 hours. The crash was strikingly similar to that of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the sea off Indonesia minutes after takeoff last year, killing 189 people. Both accidents involved the Boeing 737 Max 8.
The last deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger flight was in 2010, when a plane went down minutes after takeoff from Beirut, killing all 90 people on board. The 737 Max-8 aircraft has only been in commercial use since 2017. To know what really went wrong with flight ET 302, investigation is underway by Ethiopian authorities coordinating with teams of experts from Boeing and the US National Transportation Safety Board. The investigators found yesterday the plane’s two cockpit recorders – one for data and another for pilots’ voice recordings. Hopefully, they will soon publicize the first clue to what caused this deadly crush. In a relevant story, Ethiopian Airlines, Cayman Airways, Indonesia and Civil Aviation Administration of China have decided to ground this particular fleet as an extra safety precaution until further notice (The Ethiopian Herald used BBC,the Washington Post , AIJazeera and the Guardian to develop this story.)
Herald March 12/2019
BY YOSEF KETEMA
