What the pilot of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines plane did before the aircraft went down and killed all on board, has been revealed.
Workers erect floral installations at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff killing all 157 on board.
The pilot of the Ethiopian Airlines plane requested permission ‘in a panicky voice’ to return to the airport just moments before it crashed and killed 157 people, including nine Britons, it has been revealed.
He told controllers he was having problems keeping the aircraft steady shortly after take-off, according to an account of cockpit voice recordings from the airline’s chief executive.
The pilot ‘reported back to air traffic controllers that he was having flight control problems’, but cited no other issues, Tewolde GebreMariam told the Wall Street Journal.
A worker who reviewed air traffic communications from Sunday’s 302 flight said airport controllers noticed the plane was moving up and down by hundreds of feet at an unusually fast speed, reported the New York Times.
An Airline spokesperson has confirmed that the pilot was given permission to turn back to Bole airport, shortly after take-off, but the plane crashed just minutes later outside the capital, Addis Ababa, killing all passengers on board. French authorities are now analysing the plane’s flight data and voice recorders, while in Ethiopia officials are taking DNA samples from victims’ relatives to identify the remains.
There were no survivors among the 148 passengers and nine crew members – from at least 35 nationalities – on board. So far, seven out of the nine Britons who died have been named. Sam Pegram, 25, Joanna Toole, 36, Josepth Waithaka, 55, Sarah Auffret, 30, Oliver Vick, 45, and mother and son Sahra Hassan Said and Nasrudin Abdulkadir, were among those who tragically lost their lives in the accident.
At the crash scene in Hejere, around 31 miles from Addis Ababa, searchers continued to pick through the debris. Blue plastic sheeting covered the wreckage of the plane, which had been en-route to the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
Anxious family members who had begun giving DNA samples waited for news on when identifications of remains would begin, and whether they would have anything to bury.
Faysal Hussein, whose cousin was killed in the crash, said that they have ‘not been told what they have found so far’.
He said: ‘We are sitting here like forever. We were taken to the crash site on Wednesday but not allowed to get a closer look.
‘And then yesterday Ethiopian Airlines officials called us to a meeting but they don’t have anything to say.
‘This is frustrating.’
Following the horrific accident, numerous countries and airlines across the world have decided to halt the use of their Boeing 737 Max 8 planes – the same aircraft model involved in the crash.
Source: Metro UK
