Ethiopian Airlines pilot 'asked in panicky voice to return before Boeing 737 crash'

Ethiopian police officers walk past the debris of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines Boeing jet in March last year
Baz Ratner/Reuters
Katy Clifton15 March 2019

The pilot of the Ethiopian Airlines flight asked to return back to the airport in a panicked voice three minutes after take-off, according to reports.

“Break break, request back to home,” the captain told air traffic controllers, a person who reviewed air traffic communications told the New York Times.

It comes as the investigation into the Boeing 737 disaster got under way on Friday, with investigators in France examining the plane's black boxes.

The New York Times said captain Yared Getachew initially reported a "flight control" problem in a calm voice before asking to return in panicked tones three minutes into the flight.

One of the two black box recorders of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX
AFP/Getty Images

French authorities have the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, although Ethiopia is formally leading the investigation and US experts are in Paris and Addis Ababa too.

The Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed soon after take-off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board.

Rescuers work at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines flight crash
AP

It initially flew below the minimum safe height for its climb, then once at higher altitude was oscillating up and down by hundreds of feet, all at abnormally fast speed, the Times said.

It then disappeared from radar over a military zone and lost contact with controllers five minutes after take-off.

Ethiopian Airlines plane crash

1/23

It is the second such calamity involving Boeing's flagship new model.

The Ethiopian Airlines crash comes after a Lion Air jet came down off Indonesia in October with 189 people on board. In both cases, pilots asked to return minutes into the flight.

"It looks like the Lion Air, because the flight only lasted for six minutes," Ethiopian Airlines Chief Executive Tewolde Gebremariam told state Chinese state news agency Xinhua on Friday.

"There is clear similarity between our crash and the Lion Air crash."

The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 that crashed shortly after take-off on Sunday
AP

Regulators have grounded the 737 MAX globally as parallels between the twin disasters have frightened travellers worldwide and wiped billions of dollars off Boeing stock.

US authorities say information from the wreckage and data on its flight path show some similarities.

Two sources said investigators retrieved a piece of a stabiliser, which moves the nose up and down, set in an unusual position - similar to that of the Lion Air plane that crashed in Indonesia.

"Looking at the crash site photos, the aircraft appears to have nose-dived," Paul Gichinga, former head of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association, told Reuters.

"The pilot must have gotten some sort of indication that maybe the airspeed was unreliable or something and decided, instead of climbing and going to sort out the problem up there, the best thing was to return to have it sorted."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in