ETHIOPIAN CRASH: PROBE OF BLACK BOXES TO BEGIN TODAY
Red cross team work amid debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines near Bishoftu, a town some 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019. – An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed on March 10 morning en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi with 149 passengers and eight crew believed to be on board, Ethiopian Airlines said.
Investigators in France will begin analysing the crashed Ethiopian Airlines aircraft’s black boxes on Friday (today), seeking clues into a disaster that has angered scores of mourning families and grounded Boeing’s global 737 MAX fleet.
The black boxes arrived in Paris, France, on Thursday after a tussle over where the investigation should be held.
Reuters reports that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders were handed over to France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety agency.
Sunday’s crash after take-off from Addis Ababa killed 157 people from 35 nations in the second of such calamity involving Boeing’s new model of B737 Max in six months.
Possible links between the accidents have rocked the aviation industry, scared passengers worldwide, and left the world’s biggest planemaker scrambling to prove the safety of the model.
Boeing, however said in a statement that it had confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX but that after consultation with the United States Federal Aviation Administration, the US National Transportation Safety Board, aviation authorities and its customers around the world, it had determined the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.
The President and Chief Executive Officer of the Boeing Company, Dennis Muilenburg, said “We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution. Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be.
“There is no greater priority for our company and our industry. We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”