Ethiopian Airlines crash: Boeing faces safety questions over 737 Max 8 jets

The aircraft manufacturer Boeing faces further questions over the safety of its 737 Max 8 jet as Ethiopian Airlines joined carriers in China and elsewhere in grounding the planes after a crash on Sunday that killed all 157 people onboard.

Ethiopian Airlines said on Monday that the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder had both been recovered from the wreckage of flight ET302, meaning the cause of the crash could be soon determined.

The plane crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, ploughing into a field near Tulu Fara village outside the town of Bishoftu, 40 miles south-east of the Ethiopian capital.

Boeing’s shares fell 13% within minutes of Wall Street opening on Monday morning. More than 300 Boeing 737 Max planes are in operation and more than 5,000 have been ordered worldwide since 2017.

In the US carriers that operate the aircraft including Southwest and American Airlines posted on Twitter in an attempt to reassure customers worried by the fatal crash.

The disaster was the second involving the new 737 Max 8 in the past four months. In October, a Lion Air plane crashed into the sea off the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, killing all 189 people onboard.

Aviation experts, Chinese regulators, and concerned passengers highlighted the fact that both crashes involved models that had been in service for only a short time.

Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the US transportation department, told CNN the latest disaster was “highly suspicious” and “rings alarm bells in the aviation industry, because that just doesn’t happen”.