• A lucky man escapes death
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopian Airlines announced yesterday that it has recovered the black box of flight ET302 from the deadly crush site. In another story, a man who escaped death arriving two minutes late for the flight has been headline for various local and international media outlets.
The accident bulletin published on the Ethiopian Airlines official twitter page disclosed that the black box or digital flight data recorder that would hopefully provide the first clues as to what caused the Ethiopian Airlines plane to crash just six minutes after takeoff. The flight’s cockpit voice recorder has also been also found, the airline announced.
The so fortunate Greek man named Antonis Mavropoulos survived the deadly crush only for being late for the departure. He would have been the 150th passenger on the Nairobibound Ethiopian Airlines Boeing plane that crashed killing all on board.
“I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time,” he wrote on Facebook post entitled “My lucky day” in which he includes a photo of his ticket. Mavropoulos, president of the International Solid Waste Association, a non-profit organization, was travelling to Nairobi to attend the annual assembly of the UN Environment Programme.
He was supposed to board the plane but he reached the departure gate just two minutes after it was closed. He booked a later flight but was then prevented from boarding by airport staff.
“They led me to the police station of the airport. The officer told me not to protest but to pray to God because I was the only passenger that didn’t board the ET 302 flight that was lost,” Mavropoulos said in his post in which he admits being in shock.
The airport authorities explained that they wanted to question him because he was the only passenger booked onto the doomed flight who wasn’t on board. “They said they couldn’t let me go before cross-checking my identity, the reason I hadn’t boarded the plane etc.” (The Athens News Agency is referred as a source)
Herald March 12/2019
BY YOHANES JEMANEH
