NDJAMENA (AFP) — An Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet which made an emergency landing in Chad due to a radar problem took off again today, but 120 of its 150 passengers refused to board, airport authorities said.
The plane, a Boeing 737 en route from Dakar in Senegal to Addis Ababa via Bamako in Mali, “left this morning at 5:00 am (0400 GMT),” said an airport official, as well as airport police.
The incident comes days after another Ethiopian Airlines 737 with 90 people on board crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after takeoff from Beirut during a raging thunderstorm on Monday. There were no survivors.
Of the 150 passengers on the African flight, “120 refused to leave on the Boeing,” an airport official said. “They have been put up in different hotels. A large plane will come to collect them.”
Contacted by AFP, an Ethiopian Airlines spokesman in Ndjemena declined to comment and said that an “information office” had been opened by the company in Addis Ababa.
On Thursday, the Boeing 737 “circled around N’Djamena for one hour before making an emergency call. There was a radar problem, so it landed,” an airport official said.
An airport source said the plane, which had made a stopover in Bamako, Mali, was dumping its fuel before landing.
The same plane had already experienced electrical troubles when leaving Dakar earlier Thursday, and had had to return, passengers said.
As investigations continue into the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on Monday, relations between the Ethiopian and Lebanese communities seem to be under strain.
Ethiopian Airlines flight ET409 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea just minutes after taking off from Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport during a heavy thunderstorm early morning. Some 90 passengers were aboard, including 54 Lebanese and 30 Ethiopian nationals, seven of whom were crew members. No survivors have been found, though a number of bodies have been pulled from the water.
Officials from both countries have remained diplomatic in the face of the disaster, with Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Health Minister Mohammad Jawad Khalifeh paying their condolences at the Ethiopian Consulate. But not everyone has been so courteous.
After Lebanon’s Transport and Public Works Minister Ghazi Aridi suggested Tuesday pilot error could have caused the crash, several Lebanese media outlets carried stories inferring Ethiopia was to blame.
“The aviation discipline is such that when there is an accident, you don’t rush to conclusions, you have to wait for the investigation to be completed,” Ethiopian Airlines CEO Girma Wake told reporters on Tuesday following Aridi’s comments. “Rushing remarks, I don’t think … helps anybody.”
Message boards on Lebanese and Ethiopian websites have seen a flurry of activity, with tersely-worded accusations being hurled on either side. One commentator on the Al-Arabiya website said they believed “the Lebanese government is looking for a scapegoat” to cover up for poor airport safety.
On Monday night a regional broadcaster conducted a live interview outside the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, where bodies of the passengers are being taken. A bereaved Ethiopian who accidently walked into shot was quickly dragged out of view by the television crew.
At the hospital grounds Thursday, a group of Ethiopian women gathered to wait for news of their friends. They initially said they had been treated well by the Lebanese following the plane crash but later said they were being ignored. “There are too many problems here,” said one woman who wished to be identified as Kelile. “Many of our friends aren’t being allowed to come to the hospital. The employer of one of our friends didn’t even tell her that her sister had been onboard.”
There are around 20,000 Ethiopian migrant workers in Lebanon, mostly women who work as live-in house-keepers or nannies. According to many of those gathered outside the hospital, many of those who perished on Monday were workers who were returning home after finishing their contracts in Lebanon. Others were escaping abusive employers. “The friend I had on the plane was just released from prison,” one woman told The Daily Star, declining to identify herself or her friend. Her friend spent nine months in prison because her papers were not in order.
Pathologist Ahmad al-Muqdad told OTV the Lebanese would accept DNA samples from the Ethiopian Consulate in Beirut to help identify Ethiopian victims on board, but did not say whether genetic data would be sent to Ethiopia.
“I had friends on the plane,” said Ethiopian freelance worker Desta (not her real name). “They worked hard in Lebanon and some weren’t treated well by their employers. It makes me so sad to think how much they suffered here and then, on their way home, to have this happen.”
Desta said she’d heard from other members of her community that relatives of Ethiopian passengers were put in a separate waiting room at Beirut’s international airport following the crash. “It’s as if we’ll contaminate them [the Lebanese],” she said. “But everyone is suffering. Don’t the Ethiopian families deserve respect too?”
Search teams on Thursday sought to recover the black boxes from an Ethiopian aircraft that crashed off Lebanon’s coast, with hope the data would provide answers to the mystery surrounding the tragedy.
“We expect to have them some time today,” Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi told AFP.
An international search team picked up signals from the flight data recorders late Wednesday approximately 10 kilometres (six miles) west of Beirut airport at a depth of 1,300 metres (4,265 feet) below sea level.
“As of this morning we are evaluating the necessary means to retrieve the boxes,” a military spokesman told AFP, requesting anonymity.
“We hope to find the plane in the coming hours,” the military spokesman said.
Aridi confirmed that the body of the Boeing 737-800 had yet to be located four days after the tragedy, in which all 90 passengers and crew are presumed dead.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after takeoff from Beirut at 2:37 am (0037 GMT) during a raging thunderstorm on Monday.
Only 14 bodies, including those of two toddlers, and some body parts have been recovered so far.
Lebanese dailies carried obituaries for some of the passengers on Thursday, including some who have not yet been found.
Rescue officials have said a number of the bodies may still be strapped to their seats underwater and hope to recover them once they find the wreckage.
There were conflicting reports as to whether the jet exploded while still airbound or after it had hit the water, and officials have said there will be no answers until the data from the black boxes is retrieved and analysed.
Lebanese authorities have said they are counting on the flight data recorders to explain why the pilot veered off course on takeoff but have ruled out sabotage.
They have also cautioned against blaming the pilot without sufficient evidence.
Lebanese officials have said the pilot acknowledged instructions from the Beirut airport control tower to avoid the storm.
“To say there was pilot error is pure speculation,” Aridi told AFP earlier, echoing similar comments by the defence ministry.
Ethiopian Airlines spokesperson Wogayehu Tefere said the pilot was experienced and had been with the company for 20 years.
“He had been a co-pilot on this aircraft before and he flew this route on a regular basis as well as other routes,” he said.
The US National Transportation Safety Board and the French body for civil aviation security, the Bureau D’Enquetes et D’Analyses (BEA), have sent experts to join a team investigating the tragedy.
An international search operation was launched by the Lebanese navy, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a civilian boat from Cyprus and US navy destroyer USS Ramage with sonar equipment.
Ethiopian Airlines has had two other deadly accidents over the past 25 years, one of which was a hijacking which ended in a crash when the plane ran out of fuel.
Flight 409 had 30 Ethiopian nationals on board, including the seven crew members. Most of the Ethiopian passengers were employed in Lebanon as domestic workers and were flying home to see their families.
There were also 54 Lebanese on board, most of them Shiites from southern Lebanon. Many were transiting in Addis Ababa to other countries in Africa, where they work.
Also among the passengers was Marla Sanchez Pietton, wife of France’s ambassador to Lebanon.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – A U.S. navy vessel located on Wednesday the flight recorders from an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed off the coast of Lebanon two days ago with 90 people aboard, a security official said.
“The U.S. ship located the black boxes 1,300 metres underwater and 8 km west of Beirut airport,” the security official told Reuters, adding that search teams now had to assess the best way to retrieve the recorders.
Flight ET409, a Boeing 737-800, was carrying mostly Lebanese and Ethiopian passengers and was heading to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
The plane apparently broke up in the air before plunging in a ball of fire into the Mediterranean during a thunderstorm early on Monday.
The security official said it was still too early to say whether the USS Ramage, brought in to help with the search, had also located the plane’s fuselage.
“Theoretically the black boxes should be inside the plane’s fuselage, but this is all speculation at the moment,” he said,
Lebanese and international teams, including European and U.N. peacekeeping ships, helicopters, planes and divers have been scouring a search area 10 km (6 miles) out to sea and 20 km long for the plane’s fuselage and more of its victims.
The search has been hampered by rough seas and because of the uneven depth of the sea bed.
The flight recorders should shed light on why the pilot did not respond to a request to change direction even though he acknowledged the control tower’s commands.
Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said the plane made a sharp turn before disappearing off the radar. He said it was too early to draw any conclusion of pilot error.
Only 14 bodies and some body parts have been recovered since and authorities have all but given up on finding survivors.
The eight-year-old plane last underwent a maintenance check on Dec. 25 and no technical problems were found.
The last fatal incident involving Ethiopian Airlines was in November 1996 when a hijacked Boeing 767 crashed off the Comoros Islands, killing 125 of the 175 passengers and crew.
Over the last few days, most of us have been in sombre sadness disheartened by the disaster of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight FT-409 destined Beirut to Addis Ababa – leading to the death of 90 people onboard as it has now (at the time of this writing) been confirmed. Firstly, my condolences go to the families of the victims irrespective of where/who they belong to.
In this disaster, we also have been witnessing the unfair treatment given by some of the Beirut media and some circles directly or indirectly linked to the case. Though we may not have love for our own rulers in Addis Ababa, one of the Ethiopian iconic and unifying emblems in the tri-colour is the Ethiopian Airlines. I have been saddened to witness, at early stages of the Beirut tragedy, the unfair blames that the Tri-colour and its flight crew have been receiving, as have been mischaracterised by the Lebanese journalists, Ministry of Transport, Defence Officials etc. These comments of mine don’t implicate the Prime Minister of Beirut and other Officials who fairly have been reflecting on this tragedy.
In the first day, one of the Lebanese journalists made a crude and wrong statement saying that “the Ethiopian Airlines is not one of the best in the world.” The same journalist, by the name “Mariam Soleh,” also stated that “the pilot could have flown his plane better”, that “he must have made a mistake somewhere.” She continued saying that the pilot “did give extra fuel” to the plane. The question one asks is that did she say anything critical about the flight controllers at the airport? With no doubt in her mind she was in fact praising them that they were supporting/aiding the pilot! The Lebanese air traffic controllers have also characterized the cause of the disaster as that the pilot hasn’t maneuvered the plane as instructed by them. This view has been repeatedly played by some circles of the Lebanese victims’ family.
To this end, the Lebanese Defense Ministry and the Transportation Ministry have stated that pilot failed to follow recommendations to change the course of the flight.” This was adding the fuel to the earlier speculation of the officials with the intention of concealing the authorities’ mishandling of the flight by instructing the pilot to take off under adverse weather condition in the first place. The fact that other planes were taking off/landing can’t justify the wrong decision made by the flight controllers or anybody associated. What some circles of the Beirut media and some of the officials are doing is pointing fingers at others — the crew of the Ethiopian in this case.
I posted comments in protest of the officials’ unethical and unprofessional statements on Monday. The journalist mentioned above seemed to me that she has no proper training in journalism. The other media outlets were echoing the same guilty verdict around the world.
The Beirut air traffic controllers are in a similar way attempting to delegate responsibility by blaming the Ethiopian pilot with 20 years experience of flying a commercial jet when they have advised him to take off in such adverse weather condition.
It would be premature to draw conclusions regarding the cause of this tragedy before a complete investigation of this disaster is conducted. This has to involve the US experts knowledgeable in such cases, Boeing engineers, the Ethiopian Airlines, the Lebanese and other relevant bodies that can help with the investigation.
In the mean time, the Ethiopian Airlines management, engaging knowledgeable experts in the field, should aggressively defend the Airlines’ good name and reputation.
(The author, Mengistu Adugna, Ph.D., is a University lecturer in Computer Networks and Distributed Applied Programming. He can be reached at: [email protected])
(BBC) — The “black box” flight recorders from a passenger jet which crashed off the coast of Lebanon two days ago have been found, officials say.
A search team located the recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines flight just over 1.3km (0.8 miles) underwater, 10km west of the capital, Beirut.
The search team is now trying to retrieve them, Lebanese security officials said.
All 90 people on board the flight are presumed dead following the crash.
At least 24 bodies have been pulled from the sea so far.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after take-off from Beirut at 0237 (0037 GMT) during a severe thunderstorm on Monday.
Witnesses said they saw the plane plummet into the sea in flames.
The international search operation has included Lebanese navy troops and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) as well as US navy destroyer USS Ramage and a civilian vessel from Cyprus with sonar equipment.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, however Lebanese officials have said the jet did not fly in the direction instructed by the Beirut control tower.
The officials said the pilot had been asked to correct his course, but turned in the opposite direction.
Seven crew and 83 passengers were on board the Boeing 737-800. Most were Lebanese or Ethiopian.
Marla Pietton, the wife of the French ambassador in Beirut, was among those on board.
