Ethiopian Airlines sources have revealed that the captain who was originally assigned to fly Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 was not on board when the plane crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.
According to Ethiopian Review sources, Captain Amaha Fisseha went to Mekelle to attend a wedding, and in his place another pilot, Captain Habtamu Benti, with Co-pilot Alula Tamrat, flew the ill-fated plane.
[Correction: It was reported yesterday that Captain Amaha called in sick.]
AP and other news agencies are reporting that the pilot made a ‘strange turn’ after take off and ignored instructions from flight controllers on the ground, Lebanon’s transportation minister said Tuesday.
The tower “asked him to correct his path but he did a very fast and strange turn before disappearing completely from the radar,” Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi told The Associated Press.
The Boeing 737-800 had taken off from Beirut airport Monday during thunderstorms and lightning. It went down 3½ kilometres off the Lebanese coast at roughly 2:30 a.m. local time, only minutes after takeoff en route to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
All 90 people, including a Canadian passenger, are feared dead. Search-and-rescue teams have so far recovered more than 20 bodies and are looking for the plane’s black box and flight data recorder.
“Nobody is saying the pilot is to blame for not heeding orders,” Aridi said, adding: “There could have been many reasons for what happened.…Only the black box can tell.”
It is not clear why the pilot did not correct his flight path or whether he could. The Boeing 737 is also equipped with its own onboard weather radar, which the pilot may have used to avoid flying into storms.
The Lebanese army also said the plane was on fire shortly after takeoff. A defence official said some witnesses reported the plane broke up into three pieces. Officials have ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash, without elaborating.
Beirut air traffic control was guiding the Ethiopian flight through the thunderstorms for the first two to three minutes of its flight, an aviation analyst familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press.
The official said this was standard procedure by Lebanese controllers to assist airliners leaving the airport in bad weather.
Ethiopian Airlines said the pilot had more than 20 years of experience.
(AccuWeather) — Frequent lightning was in the area of Monday morning’s Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crash into the Mediterranean Sea, according to data compiled by AccuWeather.com.
“A significant bolt was detected at 2:37 a.m., local time, 10 miles South of the Beirut Airport and 2.5 miles west of the coastal town of Na’ameh,” said AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity.
There were rain showers accompanied by a considerable amount of thunder and wind in the vicinity of Beirut at the time of the crash. Such weather is very conducive to lightning strikes.
“Turbulent weather, such as the thunderstorms that were in the area during the time of the crash, allows the separation of charges, which causes lightning to occur,” said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Mike Pigott.
The strike was in line with the runway, and occurred shortly after the plane left Beirut at 2:30 a.m.
It appears that this bolt was directly in the flight path of the plane, which was headed to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Boeing 737-800 had approximately 90 people aboard. Several bodies have been recovered, and no survivors have been reported.
Lebanon’s Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi told the Associated Press that the pilot made “a very fast and strange turn before disappearing completely from the radar.” It is unclear as to why that happened, but officials have ruled out terrorism.
According to the World Wide Lightning Location Network out of the University of Washington, data showed severe lightning in the Lebanon area hours within the time of the crash.
“Eight WWLLN sensors detected this particular stroke, which indicates the stroke was stronger than average,” said Professor Robert Holzworth, Director of the World Wide Lightning Location Network.
A relative of one of the passengers commented that the plane should have been delayed at take off due to bad weather.
“They should have delayed the flight for an hour or two to protect the passengers. There had been strong lightning bolts and we hear that lightning strikes planes especially during take offs.”
Commercial jets are equipped with special lightning protection, including aircraft skins made of electricity-conducive aluminum, Fuel tanks and any piping carrying fuel are also protected by a skin that is thick enough to withstand sparking.
According to the Scientific American, it is estimated that each airplane in the U.S. commercial fleet is stuck by lightning more than once each year.
(Story by AccuWeather.com’s Carly Porter and Gina Cherundolo, with content contributed by Professor Robert Holzworth, Director of the World Wide Lightning Location Network. wwlln.net.)
The crew of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed off Lebanon on Monday apparently flew into violent storms after failing to follow controllers’ instructions to avoid them, it emerged today.
“A traffic control recording shows that the tower told the pilot to turn to avoid the storm, but the plane went in the opposite direction,” Elias Murr, the Lebanese Defence Minister, said. “We do not know what happened or whether it was beyond the pilot’s control.”
All 90 on board the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 died when the aircraft hit the Mediterranean shortly after taking off from Beirut airport at 2am. Initial reports talked of a possible mid-air explosion and a possible engine fire before the aircraft took off, but the nearby thunderstorms were seen as a more likely explanation.
Violent cumulonimbus, or thunder, clouds can lead to the destruction of even the biggest aircraft. Airliners fly around them, guided by their own weather radar and sometimes by ground controllers as well.
When flight ET409 took off, controllers gave it vectors — compass headings — to steer around a line of powerful storms that crossed its path over the Mediterranean. Such instructions from departure control are common in the first minutes of flight when bad weather is near by.
Flight ET409 disappeared from radar after five minutes of flight after apparently flying straight into the line of storms.
Ghazi Aridi, the Lebanese Transport Minister, said that the pilot at the controls flew in the opposite direction to that advised by the controllers. They “asked him to correct his path but he did a very fast and strange turn before disappearing completely from the radar,” he said.
There was no indication over what caused the crew to follow the wrong heading.
Severe weather has been blamed for many airliners disasters, most recently the crash of a Kenyan Airways Boeing 737 in Cameroon in 2007.
A line of violent thunderstorms is also believed to have been a major factor in the crash of Air France flight 447 that came down off Brazil last June 1. The causes have not yet been determined, but the sequence that led to the crash began when the Airbus A330 flew into violent storm cells, then, in heavy turbulence and rain, its speed-reading probes were blocked by water or ice.
The explosive vertical columns of wind in the heart of mature cumulonimbus clouds can quickly send aircraft out of control and even rip off their wings and tails. There is speculation among airline pilots today that the pilots of the Ethiopian Boeing may have lost control in such violent weather.
Without correct recovery by the pilots, this could have led to a stall or spin and a crash, or even a mid-air break-up. The aircraft was only at about 8,000ft altitude as it climbed away from Beirut. This would have given the crew very little time to regain control.
Stormy weather or sabotage are being cited in the aviation world as possible factors in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 off Beirut.
There is no evidence yet to suggest what caused the modern Boeing 737-800 airliner to hit the Mediterranean minutes after take-off. But attention focused on powerful thunder storms in the area and the possibility that an explosion could have caused the sudden end to the flight.
The crew were talking to the area “departure control” which was handling their flight when their transmissions stopped. This could mean that the aircraft suddenly broke up or that the crew were too busy handling an emergency to transmit a message.
The airport was under heavy rain and a line of thunderstorms were positioned off the coast, along the route of the Boeing as it climbed out of Beirut. The pilots would normally avoid the violent “cells” in the cumulonimbus thunder clouds, but these have brought down airliners in the past.
Most recently, in May 2007, a Kenyan Airways Boeing 737 crashed after a night take off in thunderstorms and heavy rain from Douala, Cameroon, killing all 114 on board. The cause of the crash has still not been determined, but the bad weather is thought by experts to have played a big role.
The explosive turbulence inside a cumulonimbus can upset even the biggest airliners. Such storms were an element in the crash last June 1 of Air France flight 447 off Brazil, according to the preliminary findings.
Lightning strikes are not normally a danger to airliners but dense rain can occasionally cause jet engines to “flame out” and stop. In this case, the crew would normally report their predicament to controllers, telling them that they were gliding and attempting to restart.
It is too early to rule out sabotage, as the Lebanese Government did, unless it holds information that it has not released.
If the pilots did not reported any problem, an explosive or other foul play cannot be excluded, aviation experts said. Speculation over possible sabotage or terrorism is natural, given Beirut’s position in the Middle East and Ethiopia’s support for the government of Somalia in its conflict with Islamist insurgents.
Eye-witness reports of a mid-air explosion should not be taken at face value. Such reports are common whenever a night-time crash is witnessed. The usual reason is the much higher speed of light than sound. The witness sees the fire of a distant crash before the noise, giving the false impression of preceding it.
Simple pilot error has sometimes caused airliners to crash after night take-off.
In January 2004, an Egyptian Boeing 737 hit the Red Sea shortly after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all the 148 aboard, most of them French tourists. It was found that the automatic pilot was not connected and the pilots, flying in pitch dark, let the aircraft fly almost on to its back before they lost control.
Ethiopian Airlines is viewed as one of the best on the African continent and the Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most reliable aircraft. The last fatal incident involving the airline was in November 1996. A hijacked Boeing 767 crashed-landed off the Comoros Islands after running out of fuel. Fifty of the 175 people aboard survived.
The Boeing 737 has been manufactured since 1967 with over 6,000 aircraft delivered. On average there are 1,250 737s airborne at any given time.
23) Kevin Graingur (UK)
24) Marla Sanchez Pietton (France)
25) Akram Jassem Mohammad (Iraq)
26) Mohammad Abdel-Rahman Saii (Syria)
Lebanese Nationals:
1) Hanna Nakhoul Kreidy, born on 26/6/1987
2) Haidar Hassan Marji, born on 7/11/1976
3) Ali Youssef Jaber, born on 2/4/1967
4) Ali Ahmad Jaber, born on 5/8/1969
5) Abbas Mohammad Jaber, born on 13/7/1977
6) Mohammad Mustapha Badawi, born on 5/9/1970
7) Khalil Ibrahim Salah, born on 5/9/1961
8 Hassan Adnan Kreik, born on 25/1/1984
9) Saeed Abdel-Hassan Zahr, born on 5/10/1984
10) Hussein Ali Farhat, born on 25/1/1966
11) Mohammad Hassan Kreik, born on 14/10/2006
12) Ali Souheil Yaghi, born on 28/6/1973
13) Rawan Hassan Wazni, born on 27/6/1990
14) Bassem Qassem Khazaal, born on 10/3/1974
15) Haifa Ahmad Wazni, born on 25/10/1967
16) Ali Ahmad Tajeddine, born on 3/4/1979
17) Tanal Abdallah Fardoun, born on 1/2/1952
18) Mustapha Haitham Arnaout, born on 16/9/1986
19) Fouad Mahmoud Lakiss, born on 25/8/1946
20) Mohammad Kamal Akkoush, born on 23/12/1983
21) Toni Elias Zakhem, born on 18/6/1976
22) Hamzah Ali Jaafar, born on 31/5/1985
23) Hassan Mohammad Issaoui, born on 22/11/1951
24) Hassan Kamal Ibrahim, born on 13/12/1973
25) Ghassan Ibrahim Katerji, born on 15/12/1964
26) Haifa Ibrahim Farran, born on 25/9/1965
27) Hussein Youssef Hajj Ali, born on 26/7/1968
28) Fares Rashid Zebian, born on 28/9/1955
29) Farid Saad Moussa, born on 3/6/1966
30) Mohammad Ali Khatibi, born on 27/12/1989
31) Yasser Youssef Mahdi, born on 25/8/1985
32) Anis Mustapha Safa, born in 1941
33) Hussein Moussa Barakat, born on 16/12/1983
34) Antoine Toufic Hayek, born on 30/5/1965
35) Elias Antonios Rafih, born on 29/5/1959
36) Tarek George Barakat, born on 21/10/1971
37) Khalil Naji Khazen, born on 20/6/1967
38) Rana Youssef Harakeh, born on 1/2/1980
39) Mohammad Abdel-Hussein Hajj, born on 24/1/1957
40) Julia Mohammad Hajj, born on 2/8/2007
41) Hussein Kamal Hayek, born on 15/11/1977
42) Assaad Massoud Feghali, born on 22/4/1965
43) Ziad Naeem Ksaifi, born on 5/10/1974
44) Reda Ali Mastoukirdi, born on 31/3/1968
45) Albert Jerji Assal, born on 4/11/1959
46) Imad Ahmad Hather, born on 13/5/1980
47) Fouad Mohammad Jaber, born on 6/5/1957
48) Khalil Mohammad Madani, born on 1/12/1968
49) Hasan Mohammad Abdel- Hassan Tajeddine, born on 15/8/1960
50) Yasser Abedel-Hussein Ismail, born on 1/4/1973
51) Jamal Ali Khatoun, born on 5/11/1973
52) Afif Krisht (Lebanese British), born on 29/4/1954
53) Abbas Hawili (Lebanese Canadian), born on 2/11/1945
54) Anna Mohammad Abbs (Lebanese Russian), born on 23/1/1973
BEIRUT, Lebanon (Los Angeles Times) Airlines flight that crashed into the sea early Monday during a fierce winter storm.
The Boeing 737-800 bound for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, was carrying eight crew members and 82 passengers when it crashed into the Mediterranean shortly after takeoff from Beirut amid hail and thunder. The U.S.-born wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon was among the passengers.
Authorities have yet to find the flight data and voice recorders, or black boxes, that could yield clues about the cause of the crash. But officials said the ferocious overnight storm that blanketed the small country’s mountains with snow was likely a major factor.
“Bad weather was apparently the cause of the crash,” said Defense Minister Elias Murr, according to local news outlets. “We have ruled out foul play so far.”
Lebanon’s airport has been a subject of controversy because of allegations that the Shiite Muslim political group maintains a security presence there to oversee the importation of weapons. No flights originating in Lebanon land in North America, largely because of security concerns.
But Lebanese and Ethiopian officials quickly discounted the possibility of terrorism or sabotage in the downing of the plane. A spokesman for the Addis Ababa government said the airline had received no prior threats.
