The world is pulling together to deal with another major air disaster. On Sunday, March 10, 2019, at about 8:44 am local time. Airlines in several countries grounded the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircrafts in their fleet, after an Ethiopian Airlines flight of the same model crashed yesterday, killing 157 people. There were no survivors.
Flight ET302 had just taken off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on its way to Nairobi, Kenya when it reported technical problems. It crashed minutes later. It’s the second time in five months that a new Boeing aircraft crashed just minutes into a flight. Back in October a Lion Air flight also a Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed into the Java Sea, killing 189 people.
At the moment, African airlines are the safest in the world, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Ethiopian Airlines have been central in achieving this enviable record.
This crash is a true international tragedy. People from 35 nations were passengers on the doomed flight, the largest number of them from Kenya. Eighteen Canadians, eight Americans and 19 staffers from the UN died in the crash. A Georgetown law school student from Kenya was killed, as was noted Nigerian-born scholar Pius Adesanmi and the family of a Slovakian lawmaker. Read the latest about the victims here and get the latest updates on the investigation into the crash (CNN). Sadly, there were two other fatal plane crashes over the weekend.
