Ethiopia to Issue First Boeing Investigation Report
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4 April 2019 08:06 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Addis Ababa - Investigators will release a keenly awaited report on the deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet on Thursday, April 4, Ethiopia's Transport Ministry said, giving the first official clues to the second crash of a new Boeing 737 MAX in five months.
Some 35 nationalities were among the 157 passengers and crew who died when the nearly full plane crashed six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in clear conditions.
The March 10 disaster prompted the worldwide grounding of Boeing's best-selling plane and scrutiny of its certification process.
"The 10:30 a.m. (07:30 GMT) press conference is to present the preliminary report," Ethiopian Transport Ministry spokesman Musie Yehyies said.
The report may shed light on how a piece of cockpit software came back to life after pilots initially switched it off as they tried to save the doomed jet, people familiar with the matter said, placing both technology and crew in the spotlight.
Boeing said on Wednesday it successfully tested an update of the MCAS anti-stall software that is at the center of accident probes in both the Ethiopian crash and October's Lion Air accident in Indonesia that together killed 346 people.
Boeing said its CEO Dennis Muilenburg joined the Wednesday test flight and that the flight crew performed different scenarios to test failure conditions. "The software update worked as designed, and the pilots landed safely at Boeing Field" near Seattle, the company said in a statement.
The Ethiopian-led investigation has begun piecing together details of flight 302, starting with faulty sensor data on take-off from Addis Ababa, questions over the Boeing 737 MAX's high speed and a nosedive coinciding with the software re-activation.
The aircraft's high speed and initial climb suggests the engines were running at a higher than usual thrust, experts say.
MCAS was designed to help prevent an aerodynamic stall by issuing commands to push the plane's nose lower. However, in both cases, it is suspected of firing up in response to faulty airflow data from a single sensor designed to measure the "angle of attack," a parameter needed to avoid stalling or losing lift.
Echoing the fate of the Lion Air jet, initial evidence suggests the Ethiopian Airlines jet experienced sensor problems shortly after take-off, causing the MCAS software to begin lowering the nose to grab air under the wings.
REUTERS
Read: Indonesia to Deploy Boeing Investigation Team to Ethiopia