Preliminary information from the flight data recorder of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed a week ago, killing 157 people, shows “clear similarities” with an earlier disaster involving the same kind of Boeing aircraft in Indonesia, Ethiopia’s transport minister has said.
The disclosure came as thousands of people marched on Sunday in the capital Addis Ababa, accompanying 17 empty caskets at a funeral for the Ethiopian victims of flight 302. The caskets were empty because authorities have said that recovering and identifying the remains will take months.
The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on 10 March and that of a Lion Air plane in Indonesia in October prompted the US and other countries to ground the Boeing 737 Max fleet.
The flight recorders from flight 302, which went down shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, were recovered “in a good condition that enabled us to extract almost all the data inside”, the transport minister, Dagmawit Moges, told reporters.
Information collected so far indicated “clear similarities” between both crashes, she said. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder were sent to Paris for analysis by France’s bureau of civil aviation safety (BEA).
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already said satellite-based tracking data showed that the movements of flight 302 were similar to those of Lion Air flight 610, which crashed off Indonesia, killing 189 people.
Both planes flew with erratic altitude changes that could indicate the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Shortly after their takeoffs, both crews tried to return to the airport. Suspicions have emerged that faulty sensors and software may have contributed to the crashes.
Moges said the Ethiopian government intended to release detailed findings within a month.
At the memorial service earlier in the day, some of the relatives who marched behind the flag-draped coffins were overcome with grief and fainted.
The service came one day after officials began delivering bags of scorched earth from the crash site to family members of the victims because of the problems with identifying remains.
Family members said they were given a 1kg (2.2lb) sack from the crash site. Many relatives have already gone to the field outside Addis Ababa where the plane went down to pay their respects.
Mourner Elias Bilew said he had worked with one of the victims, Sintayehu Shafi, for the past eight years. “He was such a good person,” Bilew said. “He doesn’t deserve this. He was the pillar for his whole family.”
