MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Boeing facing serious questions following two crashes in five months of the 737 Max 8

US plane maker Boeing faces questions after an Ethiopian Airlines 737 crash on Sunday killed all 157 people on board. It was the second crash in five months involving a 737 Max 8, the newest version of the plane. Comparisons are being drawn with a Lion Air accident last October where the plane lost altitude soon after takeoff.

However, experts warn it is too early to say what caused the Ethiopian Airlines disaster.

Ethiopian Airlines says the plane, flight ET302, crashed at 08:44 local time (05:44 GMT), just six minutes after it left Addis Ababa. The aircraft, bound for Nairobi, came down near the town of Bishoftu, 60km (37 miles) south-east of the capital.

The pilot had reported difficulties and had asked to return to Addis Ababa, the airline said.
“At this stage, we cannot rule out anything,” Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told reporters at Bole International Airport in the capital.

Visibility was said to be good but air traffic monitor Flightradar24 reported that the plane's vertical speed was unstable after take-off“  The pilot was named as Senior Captain Yared Getachew, who had a ”commendable performance“ with more than 8,000 hours in the air, the airline said.

Passengers from more than 30 countries were on board the flight, including 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, and seven Britons. At least 19 victims were affiliated with the United Nations, according a UN official.Slovak MP Anton Hrnko also confirmed via Facebook that his wife and two children were on the plane.

In response to the accident, Ethiopia has declared Monday a national day of mourning.

The 737 Max-8 aircraft is relatively new to the skies, having only been in commercial use since 2017.

The plane that crashed was among six of 30 that Ethiopian Airlines had ordered as part of its expansion. It underwent a ”rigorous first check maintenance“ on 4 February, the airline tweeted.

Boeing said it was ”deeply saddened“ by the crash and is sending a team to provide technical assistance.

Following the Lion Air crash last October, investigators said the pilots had appeared to struggle with an automated system designed to keep the plane from stalling - a new feature of the Boeing 737 Max.

The anti-stalling system repeatedly forced the plane's nose down, despite efforts by pilots to correct this, findings suggest. The crash killed 189 people.

The Lion Air plane was also new and the accident happened soon after take-off.

”It's highly suspicious,“ Mary Schiavo, former Inspector General of the US Transportation Department, told CNN.

”Here we have a brand-new aircraft that's gone down twice in a year. That rings alarm bells in the aviation industry, because that just doesn't happen.“

After last October's crash, Boeing sent an emergency notice to airlines warning them of a problem with the anti-stalling system. Boeing is expected to release a software patch to the system to deal with this issue, according to Reuters.

Andrew Blackie, an aviation safety consultant and former commercial pilot, told Associated Press that system changes ”may have not been not been particularly well explained to the operating crew.“

”[But] if you look across the history of aviation it's not hugely unusual for there to be a spike in accident rates when a new aircraft type is introduced into service.”

However, with the Ethiopian Airlines investigation at an early stage, it is not clear whether the anti-stalling system was the cause of Sunday's crash. Aviation experts say other technical issues or human error cannot be discounted.

Ethiopian Airlines has a good safety reputation, although in 2010 one of the company's airplanes crashed in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after leaving Beirut.