An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger jet bound to Nairobi, Kenya with 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard crashed yesterday morning, the airline said.
Flight ET 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu, 62 kilometers southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, the airline said, confirming the plane was a Boeing 737-800 MAX, registration number ET-AVJ.
The flight left Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. local time before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8:44 a.m. local time (1:44 p.m. in Manila)
“Search and rescue operations are in progress and we have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties,” the airline said in a statement.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s official Twitter account yesterday expressed condolences to families of those lost in the crash, without giving details.
“The office of the PM, on behalf of government and people of Ethiopia, would like to express its deepest condolences to the families that have lost their loved ones on Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 on regular scheduled flight to Nairobi, Kenya this morning,” the Prime Minister’s office said on Twitter.
State-owned Ethiopian Airlines is one of the biggest carriers on the continent by fleet size. It said previously that it expected to carry 10.6 million passengers last year.
Its last major crash was in January 2010 when a flight from Beirut went down shortly after take-off. (Reuters)
