Crashed ET plane captain alerted ATC about technical problem

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The captain of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane, Boeing 737-8 Max, Yared Getachew (Cap.), had radioed the air traffic controllers at Bole International Airport and informed that he faced a problem. This was announced at a press conference that the Ethiopian Airlines Group Tewolde Gebremariam, along with other members of the Airlines administration, gave today in the afternoon.

Based on the request from the captain to land back, the ATCs had granted him clearance after which the plane went off radar and crashed at a place called Ejere, between Bishoftu and Mojo towns.

The plane came from Johannesburg, South Africa and was inspected at the Bole International Airport before taking off to Nairobi after three ours at the airport. This specific aircraft is new for Ethiopian only being four months since its delivery from Boeing and it has a flight time of 1,200 hours.

Captain Yared, born from Ethiopian and Kenyan parents, has been flying with Ethiopian Airlines since July 2010 and has a flight time of 8,231 hours. He became Boeing 737 captain in November 2017. The first officer named Ahmed Nur has a flight time of 200 hours.

Ethiopian Airlines now remains with five B738-8 Max aircraft losing one for this accident. Its first B737-8 Max was delivered in June 2018.

When asked whether this is accident might be a sabotage, the managers said that “we don’t rule out anything or don’t want to attribute the cause of the accident to anything” adding that they won’t speculate on the cause which will be conducted by the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority and Boeing. They committed full cooperation for the success of the investigation.

The plane crash that happened en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on the morning of March 10, 2019 claimed the lives of 157 passengers including crew members.