Ethiopian Airlines
An Ethiopian Airlines flight to Nairobi with 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard crashed just six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa Sunday.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members, took off at 08:38am (05:38 GMT) and lost contact with air traffic controllers six minutes later.
It crashed near Bishoftu, southeast of the Ethiopian capital, Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash of the plane, which was new and had been delivered to the airline in November.
None of the 157 people on board an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed on Sunday morning en route to Nairobi from Addis Ababa have survived, the airline said.
Incident analysis
The pilot was a senior Ethiopian Airlines pilot who had flown more than 8,000 hours. He had an "excellent flying record," GebreMariam said.
The CEO visited the crash site on Sunday. He said the plane "is now right inside the ground" and it was not possible to identify whether it was an emergency landing or a crash. He said there was still smoke at the site when he visited.
"As it is a fresh incident, we have not been able to determine the cause. As I said, it is a brand new airplane with no technical remarks, flown by a senior pilot and there is no cause that we can attribute at this time."
"The routine maintenance check didn't reveal any problems," GebreMariam added.
Asked about the possibility of terrorism or sabotage, he said, "At this stage, we cannot rule out anything."
Who are the victims?
They included 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians, eight each from China, the United States, and Italy; seven each from France and Britain; six from Egypt; four each from India and Slovakia, among others.
Foreign governments said tourists, business people, doctors, and a Kenyan football official were among the dead.
Also on board was at least one staff member of the UN Environment Programme meeting in Nairobi from Monday for an annual assembly of 4,700 heads of state, ministers, business leaders, senior UN officials and civil society representatives. The head of the World Food Programme also wrote on Twitter that agency staff were among those on board.
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