Ethiopian Aviation authorities have just released the preliminary findings of the air accident investigation currently underway to establish the causes of the Boeing B737MAX8 crash of flight ET302.
Here is the full statement as received moments ago:
Ethiopian Airlines Aviation Group which is the largest and the most successful Aviation group in Africa, would like to acknowledge the preliminary report of the accident of ET 302/10 March, 2019 and would like to appreciate the hard work of the investigation team.
The preliminary report clearly showed that the Ethiopian Airlines Pilots who were commanding Flight ET 302/10 March have followed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved emergency procedures to handle the most difficult emergency situation created on the airplane. Despite their hard work and full compliance with the emergency procedures, it was very unfortunate that they could not recover the airplane from the persistence of nose diving. As the investigation continues with more detailed analysis, as usual we will continue with our full cooperation with the investigation team.
Group CEO, Tewolde GebreMariam said that “All of us at Ethiopian Airlines are still going through deep mourning for the loss of our loved ones and we would like to express our deep sympathy and condolences for the families, relatives and friends of the victims. Meanwhile; we are very proud of our pilots’ compliances to follow the emergency procedures and high level of professional performances in such extremely difficult situations. We are also very proud of our Global Standard Pilot Training Center and the Ethiopian Aviation Academy which is one of the largest and most modern in the world equipped with state of the art and latest training technologies.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our valued customers, the travelling public, the media and global aviation professionals for the remarkably high level of vote of confidences and strong support that you have been giving us starting from the day of this tragic accident. We will double our efforts every single day to win your confidence and earn your business. Your Safety will remain our top most priority and we will continue to work together with our partners around the world to make air travel safer and more comfortable. My highest appreciation also goes to my 16,000 colleagues at Ethiopian Airlines for their resilience, high standards of professionalism and their continued commitment for operational excellence and their award winning customer services which enabled us to continue our business with out any operational disruption, flight delays nor flight cancellations.”
This preliminary report rubbishes malicious and largely anti African comments made about the airline and the accident by US media, in particular #SomeoneTellCNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post but also calls in question the initial statements made by Boeing and the FAA, both of which resisted calls for the grounding of the aircraft until the rest of the world had banned the Boeing B737MAX to fly in their respective airspaces and there was no place to go for them but to follow suit.
Investigations into the certification process by the FAA are ongoing as is a criminal investigation into certain aspects how the aircraft was pronounced airworthy.
As Africa stands by Ethiopian Airlines, so has the rest of the world now too come around to acknowledge and pay tribute to their safety standards and operational acumen of Africa’s leading airline brand.
The present report now also calls for a more thorough review of the report of the Lion Air crash five months ago now that additional facts are available. In that crash six months ago the aircraft was lost under strikingly similar circumstances and the same culprits from the US were prompt to also blame airline and pilots for the accident.
