Preliminary information from the flight data recorder of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed a week ago and killed 157 people shows "clear similarities" with an earlier disaster involving the same kind of Boeing aircraft in Indonesia, Ethiopia's transport minister said Sunday. The disclosure came as thousands marched in the capital of Addis Ababa, accompanying 17 empty caskets at a funerEthiopian victims of Flight 302. The crash of Ethiopian Flight 302 on March 10 and that of a Lion Air plane in Indonesia in October — both of them Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliners — have prompted the United States and other countries to ground the aircraft. The flight recorders from Flight 302 that went down shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa for Nairobi were recovered "in a good condition that enabled us to extract almost all the data inside," Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told reporters. Information collected so far from the flight data recorder has indicated "clear similarities" between both crashes, she said.

Source: Ethiopian News March 17, 2019 19:52 UTC