An Ethiopian Airlines plane with 90 people on board crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Beirut in stormy weather early on Monday. The airline’s chief executive said there was no word of survivors.
The Boeing 737-800, heading for the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, disappeared off the radar about five minutes after taking off at 2:37 am local time (0037 GMT) during a thunder storm and heavy rain.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman ruled out foul play.
“As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely. The investigation will uncover the cause,” Suleiman told a news conference.
Fourteen bodies have so far been recovered near the crash site three-and-a-half km (two miles) west of the coastal village of Na’ameh. Eighty-three passengers and seven crew were on the flight, Transport Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said at the airport.
Marla Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton, was one of those aboard, the French embassy said.
Besides Pietton, the passenger list included 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopian and two British nationals, according to airline officials. Other nationals included a French Canadian, a Russian, an Iraqi and a Syrian.
‘Ball of fire’
As the Lebanese government declared a day of mourning, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri visited the airport to meet distraught relatives waiting for news.
Some of the family members were angry that the plane was allowed to take off in bad weather. Heavy rains and storms have caused flooding and damage in some parts of the country over the past few days.
“They should have delayed the flight for an hour or two to protect the passengers. There had been strong lightning bolts and we hear of lighting strikes at planes especially during take-offs,” a relative of one of the passengers told a local television station.
Meanwhile, FRANCE 24’s Lucy Fielder reported from Beirut that witnesses saw “a ball of fire descending into the sea.”
Fielder said a “massive rescue operation” was underway, as Lebanese army patrol boats and helicopters searched a small area off Na’ameh, 10 km (six miles) south of Beirut.
The military spokesman for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, Colonel Diego Fulco, said two ships from its maritime task force were at the crash site and a third was on its way. Two UN helicopters were also at the scene, he said.
According to a Lebanese defence ministry official, the US has offered a P-3 aircraft to assist in the search operation, and the French organisation responsible for technical investigation of civil aviation accidents was assisting in the probe.
An unusual accident for Ethiopian Airlines
State-owned Ethiopian Airlines has positioned itself as a major player in international air traffic in Africa and has recently expanded its Asian network.
It has regular flights to Lebanon, catering to business clients and the hundreds of Ethiopians who work there as domestic helpers.
In an interview with FRANCE 24, David Learmount, aviation expert and an editor at Flight International, a magazine on the industry, expressed his surprise at the events.
“Ethiopian Airlines has, until this, been absolutely a beacon of light,” he said. “It’s got an exceptional safety record.”
Learmount also noted that the plane that went down was “from the latest version of the 737 series”, making the crash even more unusual. “We have a first-class airline and a first-class airplane, and there’s been an accident,” he said.
The last major incident involving Ethiopian Airlines was in November 1996 when 125 of the 175 passengers and crew died after a hijacked Boeing 767 crashed into the sea off the Comoros Islands.
The airline’s website carries this statement: “Ethiopian Airlines regrets to confirm the unfortunate accident of ET-409 which took place shortly after departure from Beirut International Airport today January 25, 2010.”
It added that an investigative team had already arrived at the scene.
The airline company supplied the following numbers for people seeking additional information about the crash: +251 11 517 8766, +251 91 150 1248, +251 11 517 8028, +251 11 517 8054, +251 11 517 8025, +251 11 517 8030, +251 91 125 5577, +251 91 120 3412 or the Ethiopian Airlines toll free number: +251 11 662 0062
We’re told the US Navy is part of an international effort to find any survivors of the Ethiopian Air Lines crash off Beirut Lebanon. The 6th Fleet guided missile destroyer USS Ramage which was on maneuvers in the area is involved, as is a P-3 Orion maritime search and rescue aircraft.
The airline is saying no Americans were on the flight. There was a total of 90 people on board and feared dead. The majority of them are Lebanese and Ethiopian. There were two Britons, a French person and a Canadian.
A US official does tell us, though, that there are many “dual nationals” in Beirut, that is, those carrying both Lebanese and American passports, they don’t always show up on first review, so the last word on this will have to wait.
As for cause, locals tell us it was a stormy night in Lebanon and bad weather is being looked at as the principal cause.
Right now terror or sabotage is being ruled oiut.
Mechanical fault can’t be ruled out, although the type of aircraft, the 737-800, is durable. The New York-based CIT Aerospace firm which actually leased the plane to Ethiopian Airlines referred questions back to the firm.
The Beirut Airport is built right up against the densely populated outskirts of the city. New video indicates two flashes came from the plane over land but the craft went down into the sea. A tragedy could have been worse.
Lebanese rescue teams Monday recovered 10 bodies from the wreckage of an Ethiopian airliner that plunged into the Mediterranean Sea minutes after takeoff in heavy rains and storms from the Beirut International Airport earlier in the day.
“We have so far found 10 bodies at the crash site off the coast of Naameh, 7 miles (12 kilometers) south of the Beirut airport,” an unidentified defense ministry official told a local news agency. (RTTNews)
An Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 with 90 people on board crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Beirut in bad weather early on Monday.
Ethiopian Airlines chief executive Ato Girma Wake said a team of eight people from Derbyshire-based crisis management company Blake Emergency Services, which specialises in airline incidents, was travelling to Beirut.
Local media quoted Lebanese army officials as saying that seven survivors had been rescued.
However, according to other reports, police officers said there had been two survivors. The conflicting reports of survivors were not confirmed by the UN or government officials.
Confirmation of the loss of the flight came from the operator in Addis Ababa.
“Ethiopian flight ET-409 scheduled to operate from Beirut to Addis Ababa on January 25 lost contact with the Lebanese air controllers shortly after takeoff. The flight departed at 02.35 Lebanese time from Beirut International Airport,” the airline said in a statement.
The aircraft carried 51 Lebanese nationals, 23 Ethiopians, as well as Iraqi, Syrian, British,and French nationals, the minister said. One of the passengers is believed to be the wife of the French ambassador in Beirut.
Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman described the incident as “painful”. Suleiman put all medical and security forces on maximum alert.
Lebanese army patrol boats and helicopters were searching a small area off Na’ameh, 10 km (six miles) south of Beirut.
The military spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, Colonel Diego Fulco, said two ships from its maritime task force were at the crash site and a third was on its way. Two U.N. helicopters were also at the scene, he said.
A Cypriot police helicopter and another from the British military stationed in Cyprus were also involved in the search.
According to one source, residents on the coast saw a “ball of fire” crashing off Na’ameh.
State-owned Ethiopian Airlines, which confirmed the crash, has positioned itself as a major player in international air traffic in Africa and has recently expanded its Asian network.
It has regular flights to Lebanon, catering for business clients and the hundreds of Ethiopians who work there as domestic helpers. Lebanese aviation sources said some of the passengers had been en route to Angola.
Last Friday the airline announced an order for 10 of Boeing’s Next-Generation 737-800s for a total price of $767 million.
The last major incident involving Ethiopian Airlines was in November 1996 when 125 of the 175 passengers and crew died after a hijacked Boeing 767 crashed into the sea off the Comoros Islands.
One airport official said the plane was struck by lightning before it fell into the sea.
The Boeing aircraft disappeared off the radar screens shortly after takeoff, the state-run Lebanese National News Agency reported.
Witnesses in the area said they heard a loud noise and then saw a plane on fire plunging into the water.
Rescue teams were seen gathering near the area where the plane reportedly crashed.
“The weather is not helping us at all,” a member of the rescue team said. “But we hope to find some survivors.”
Aridi said the crash site had been identified at 3.5 km west of the coastal village of Na’ameh.
The Boeing 737-800, heading for Addis Ababa, disappeared off the radar some five minutes after taking off at 2:37 a.m. (0037 GMT) during a thunder storm and heavy rain. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said he did not think the plane had been brought down deliberately.
“As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely. The investigation will uncover the cause,” Suleiman told a news conference.
Eighty-three passengers and seven crew were on the flight, Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi al-Aridi told reporters at the airport where relatives of the passengers gathered to wait for news of survivors.
“(The crash) site has been identified three-and-a-half km (two miles) west of the (coastal) village of Na’ameh,” he said.
Fifty-four of those on board were Lebanese, 22 were Ethiopian, two were British and there were also Canadian, Russian, French, Iraqi and Syrian nationals.
Marla Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton, was on the plane, the French embassy said. The Lebanese government has declared a day of mourning.
The U.K. Foreign Office said one British national and one with dual nationality were on board Flight ET409.
No further details about the two people would be released until next of kin had been informed, it added.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “Our thoughts are with the families of all those involved in this tragedy.”
At least 21 bodies have been recovered, and there has been no news of anyone surviving the crash.
An RAF helicopter, based in Cyprus, has joined the Lebanese authorities’ search-and-rescue operation.
ADDIS ABABA (The Economist) — Worries about Ethiopia’s election, due in May, are growing. Aid-giving Western governments hope it will pass off without the strife that followed the last one, in 2005, when 200 people were killed, thousands were imprisoned, and the democratic credentials of Meles Zenawi, despite his re-election, were left in tatters.
Though poor and fragile, Ethiopia carries a lot of weight in the region. A grubby election could worsen things in neighbouring Sudan, where civil war threatens to recur. The borderlands near Kenya, where cattle raiding, poaching and banditry are rife, would become still more dangerous. A renewal of unrest in Ethiopia would be exploited by its [Woyanne regime] arch-enemy, Eritrea, which already backs sundry rebel groups in an effort to undermine the country’s government Woyanne. And it could make matters even worse in Somalia, where jihadist fighters linked to al-Qaeda want to weaken “Christian” Ethiopia, where a third of the people are in fact Muslim. Foreign intelligence sources have long feared a jihadist attack in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia is a country of contradictions. With its present population of around 82m growing by 2m a year, it is poised to overtake Egypt as Africa’s second-most-populous country after Nigeria, with around 150m. It hosts the seat of the African Union. It runs one of Africa’s biggest airlines. This year its economy is predicted to grow by 7%, one of the fastest rates in the world [according to the Meles regime]. It is wooing foreign investors with offers to lease 3 million hectares of arable land [pushing out local farmers]. It is expensively branding its coffee for export.
Yet the grim side is just as striking. Hunger periodically stalks the land. Some 5m people rely on emergency food to survive; another 7m get food aid. Few people benefit from the country’s free market [the beneficiaries are only members of the ruling party]. Ethiopia has one of Africa’s lowest rates of mobile-phone ownership [to keep the people in the dark age]. Income per head is one of the most meagre in the continent.
All this is the responsibility of Mr Meles’s Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has run the show since 1991. The party is dominated by former Marxist rebels from Tigray, even though Tigrayans, among them Mr Meles, make up only 6% of Ethiopia’s population. Not that Tigrayans want to cling to power, says Mr Meles brusquely. It is just that Ethiopia needs consistency to pursue a long-term development agenda. And the EPRDF can point to some successes. Since Mr Meles came to power, infant mortality has fallen by half, school attendance has risen dramatically and life expectancy has increased from 45 to 55 years.
Nourishing a liberal democracy or upholding human rights, however, has never been central to that agenda, even less so after Mr Meles clobbered the opposition in 2005. Some Western diplomats insist, implausibly, that politics has got better since. The government and some opposition parties have, for instance, signed a code of conduct for the coming election. Some of the opposition groups are genuine, but others are in hock to the EPRDF. In any case, the main opposition grouping, Forum, refused to join the talks, arguing that the EPRDF would exploit any agreement for its own ends. The government has been smothering potential sources of independent opposition, such as foreign and local NGOs. It insists it does not censor the press, but newspapers continue to close and independent journalists are moving abroad. Some farmers allege they are being denied food aid for political reasons.
Forum is demanding the release of one its leaders, Birtukan Mideksa, from prison. She was jailed with other opposition figures after the 2005 election, later pardoned, then arrested again. She is unlikely to be let out again before the poll as she could, some say, pose a real threat to the EPRDF in Addis Ababa and other cities.
Yet most Western governments seem keen to downplay Mr Meles’s human-rights record, hoping his re-election will keep his country stable. America is to disburse $1 billion in state aid to Ethiopia this year, more if covert stuff is included. Ethiopia can expect a similar amount from the European Union, multilaterally and through bilateral arrangements with Britain and others. And climate-change deals may bring Mr Meles even more cash.
A fierce storm appears to have caused the crash of an Ethiopian Airline jet that plunged in a ball of fire into the sea with 90 people on board, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said yesterday.
“Bad weather was apparently the cause of the crash,” Mr Murr said.
“We have ruled out foul play so far,” he added, noting that soldiers combing the Lebanese shoreline had recovered pieces of the plane.
“When there is an explosion (on board an airplane) nothing is usually left.”
A massive international search and rescue operation was hastily scrambled as Lebanese President Michel Sleiman ruled out foul play and officials played down hopes of any survivors from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 bound for Addis Ababa.
“Up until now, we have ruled out foul play,” Mr Sleiman said.
A Lebanese security official said that by noon (9pm AEDT), 21 bodies had been pulled from the sea, including that of a child. One rescue official said that the bodies recovered were dismembered. Eight empty seats from the Boeing 737-800, as well as luggage and personal belongings, had started washing up on the Lebanese shoreline, just south of the airport. Soldiers on the beach dragged large metal chunks of the plane.
He added that Prime Minister Saad Hariri would chair an emergency ministerial meeting later Monday to assess the situation.
The plane exploded into four pieces before crashing shortly after takeoff at 2.30am. Investigators were trying to determine whether lightning had hit the jet.
A worker at a petrol station near the site said he heard an explosion and saw “a huge ball of fire” as the plane crashed into the sea. Another witness said: “It was like the whole sea lit up.”
Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said Flight 409 had lost contact with the airport control tower shortly after takeoff and crashed into the Mediterranean 3.5km off the coastal town of Naameh, south of the airport.
“The control tower was assisting the pilot of the plane on takeoff and suddenly lost contact for no known reason,” Mr Aridi said.
The Lebanese army and navy, as well as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon and aircraft from France, Britain and the US, were assisting in the rescue.
Officials listed 83 passengers and seven crew members on board the flight. The passengers include 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopians, one French woman and one British national. Among the Lebanese were two children. The French passenger was identified as Marla Sanchez Pietton, wife of France’s ambassador to Lebanon, Denis Pietton.
Families of the passengers, some of them weeping uncontrollably, huddled at the VIP lounge of Beirut International Airport to await news of their loved ones.
One woman was sobbing and screaming, “Why, why?” as others fainted and had to be carried away by Red Cross volunteers.
“I know they won’t find him,” wailed one woman, referring to her husband, who was on board the flight.
Ethiopian Airlines chief executive Girma Wake said in Addis Ababa that the aircraft had been serviced on December 25 and passed inspection.
British Aviation safety analyst Chris Yates noted that modern aircraft were built to withstand all but the foulest weather. He said that reports of fire could suggest “some cataclysmic failure of one of the engines” or that something had been sucked into the engine, such as a bird or debris.
Lebanon has been lashed by storms in the past two days that have caused flooding and damage in some parts of the country.
When news of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash broke this morning my heart sank at the thought of covering yet another negative story about Ethiopia.
It’s particularly galling for Ethiopians that the airline is one of the few international success stories for a country known mostly for famine and war.
When the news emerged I also immediately knew how hard the company’s staff would take it. I’ve been to the sprawling campus that serves as headquarters to Africa’s arguably flagship airline many times. The last time was just last week to interview CEO Girma Wake and I left with a gift of Ethiopian coffee and the impression that I’d rarely seen people so passionate or proud about their work and what it does for their country.
Ethiopian Airlines is a company that Ethiopians are proud of. It has consistently expanded and remained profitable through tough times for other airlines and all manner of global economic strife. It has prioritized safety in a continent with a lamentable record and it is aggressively expanding into China and India.
It had an impressive safety record before today, last suffering a disaster in 1996 when Somali hijackers demanded to be flown to Australia, causing the plane to run out of fuel and ditch off the Comoros, killing 123 of its 175 passengers.
Ethiopians I spoke to this morning said they didn’t think people outside of the country would be surprised that an Ethiopian Airlines plane had crashed, so negative are foreign perceptions of the country. But the fact is: it is a surprise.
The airline is a symbol of hope for Ethiopia. And Ethiopia is a truly unique and propitious country of 80 million people — albeit with a desperate history.
Democracy is now — debatably — slowly emerging, a middle class has appeared, the economy is growing, more Ethiopians than ever before are being educated, and ambitious and fiercely patriotic Ethiopians are taking control of the future of one of Africa’s most exciting prospects. Ethiopia is not just bad news anymore.
The cause of the crash is still unknown. But it would be a shame if this one incident damages perceptions of an emerging airline and a promising country.
When news of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash broke this morning my heart sank at the thought of covering yet another negative story about Ethiopia.