A Greek man has narrated how he would have been counted among the dead in the Ethiopian Airlines that crashed on Sunday.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737 which was enroute Kenya, crashed just minutes after an early-morning takeoff from Addis Ababa killing all 149 passengers and 8 crew members who were onboard.
The man identified as Antonis Mavropoulos was supposed to be the 150th passenger but he arrived two minutes late for the flight.
He was travelling to Nairobi to attend the annual assembly of the UN Environment Programme. However, he wasn’t able to board the plane because he reached the departure gate just two minutes after it was closed.
Sharing a photo of his ticket, he wrote on Facebook:
“My lucky day
I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time.
They led me to the police station of the airport. The officer told me not to protest but to pray to God because I was the only passenger that didn’t board the ET 302 flight that was lost.
The airport authorities explained that they wanted to question him because he was the only passenger booked onto the doomed flight who wasn’t on board.
They said they couldn’t let me go before cross-checking my identity, the reason I hadn’t boarded the plane etc.”
