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Inquiry into Ethiopian Air crash confirms Boeing 737 Max software failure
The crash of the Nairobi-bound Boeing 737 MAX six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, which killed all passengers and crew aboard, triggered the global grounding of the MAX and the worst crisis in Boeing's history.
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In pieces: American civil aviation and Boeing investigators search through debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, on Tuesday. (Reuters/Baz Ratner)
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2019 Ethiopian Airlines plane crash which killed 157 people was caused by a flight software failure as suspected, the country's transport minister said Friday citing the investigators' final report.
The crash of the Nairobi-bound Boeing 737 MAX six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, which killed all passengers and crew aboard, triggered the global grounding of the MAX and the worst crisis in Boeing's history.
It came just months after the October 2018 crash of a 737 MAX operated by Lion Air in Indonesia, which killed 189 people when it crashed moments after leaving Jakarta airport.
Both accidents saw uncontrolled drops in the aircraft's nose in the moments before the planes crashed, which investigators have blamed on the model's anti-stall flight system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS.
The Ethiopian investigators had already pointed out in a March 2020 progress report that the design of the MCAS system "made it vulnerable to undesirable activation".
"The airplane's left angle of attack (AOA) sensor failed immediately after take-off, sending faulty data to the flight control system," Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told reporters.
"The erroneous data entered triggered Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which repeatedly pitched the nose of the airplane down to the point and the pilot lost control."
