By Elias Meseret
McClatchy News Service
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Flight data recorders from a doomed Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet were found Monday, as the type of Boeing plane involved in the crash was grounded in three countries.
The black box was recovered from the scene of the disaster outside the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, with an airline employee telling dpa it was “partially damaged.”
“We will see what we can retrieve from it,” said the Ethiopian Airlines official, who asked not to be named.
Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleets were grounded in Ethiopia, China and Indonesia in the wake of the disaster that killed 157 people at the weekend.
Nairobi-bound flight ET302 went down shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
While plane crashes are exceedingly rare events, the tragedy raised fresh questions about the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. It was the second accident involving the model in just over four months, after a crash in Indonesia in late October.
Ethiopian Airlines, the largest air carrier in Africa, said in a statement that it was grounding the planes as an “extra safety precaution” until further notice.
China’s aviation authority also grounded them pending further investigation. Chinese airlines have 96 in use, according to the Civil Aviation Administration.
Indonesia halted all 11 of its planes, the Transportation Ministry said, while the flagship carrier of the Cayman Islands, an autonomous British territory in the Caribbean, likewise grounded its 737s after Sunday’s crash.
South African airline Comair —a British Airways franchisee which also operates as low-cost carrier Kulula —has also temporarily grounded its Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane.
In India, civil aviation authorities ordered a safety assessment of the MAX 8. Budget airline SpiceJet operates 13 while full service carrier Jet Airways has five, but they are not in operation, the company said.
Many other airlines around the world expressed their confidence in the plane and said they had no plans to take them out of service.
But the news hit Frankfurt-listed Boeing shares, which were down 9 percent in midday trading. In New York, the company was down 11 percent when the markets opened there, dragging the Dow Jones Industrial Averages into negative territory.
Asked whether Boeing is worried about damage to the brand, and whether it agrees with the decisions taken in some countries to ground its aircraft, a company spokesman referred dpa to a statement.
“We have engaged our customers and regulators on concerns they may have,” one statement by Boeing said.
“The investigation is in its early stages, but at this point, based on the information available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators,” it added.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 from the U.S. aviation giant entered service in 2017.
Few industries put as high a value on safety as aviation.
“Safety first is the main motto in air transport,” said Jan-Arwed Richter of the Hamburg-based flight safety office JACDEC.
Although it is too soon to more than speculate on the recent crashes, the accident researcher said that with nearly 350 people dead “within four months of the same type of aircraft, it is high time, in my view, to get the most accurate information on whether technology is the cause here.”
In October, a Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air plummeted into the Java Sea, killing 189 passengers and crew. As in Ethiopia, the crash happened shortly after takeoff.
The country’s National Transportation Safety Committee found evidence of technical errors in its preliminary report on the Lion Air crash.
On Monday, Indonesia said it was considering offering investigative help to Ethiopia. U.S. investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration were expected to arrive on Tuesday, the US Ambassador to Ethiopia told local media.
The Boeing 737 took off at 8:38 a.m. on Sunday from Bole International Airport and lost contact a few minutes later, according to Ethiopian Airlines.
The airline had bought the new plane in November, and the plane had flown only 1,200 hours since its purchase and was last maintained on February 4.
The plane had arrived in Addis Ababa on Sunday morning from Johannesburg, South Africa, before taking off for Nairobi a few hours later, according to Ethiopian Airlines.
The 157 people on the aircraft were of 35 different nationalities, and the search for human remains continued Monday.
Ethiopian Airlines has set up a committee with Boeing, the national civil aviation authority, the national transport authority and other experts to conduct forensic investigations and identify the victims.
At the crash site, debris showed the human toll — with passports and other personal items of those onboard strewn in the grass.
Twenty-one U.N. staff members were among the dead. The crash occurred on the eve of a large U.N. environmental conference starting in Nairobi this week.
The U.N. flag flew at half-staff in New York on Monday, and the U.N. Security Council in New York and staff in Geneva observed a minute of silence in honor of those who died.
The Ethiopian government has declared a day of national mourning, and more than 300 people turned out at a memorial ceremony at the Ethiopian Pilots Association hall outside Addis Ababa, many of them pilots and other crew members.
There were scenes of agony as some airline employees wept uncontrollably.
