Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. On 10 March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft which operated the flight crashed near the town of Bishoftu six minutes after takeoff. All 149 passengers and 8 crew members on board died.

It is Ethiopian Airlines' deadliest accident to date, surpassing the fatal hijacking of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 resulting in a crash near the Comoros in 1996 that killed 125. It is also the deadliest aircraft accident to occur in Ethiopia, surpassing the crash of an Ethiopian Air Force Antonov An-26 in 1982, which killed 73 people on board.

The crash was caused by a fault in the plane's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight stabilizing system developed by Boeing for the MAX 8. The system had been designed to rely on a single sensor to detect the aircraft's angle of attack. Due to a failure in the sensor, the aircraft's nose was repeatedly pitched down against the pilots' inputs, eventually leading the plane to crash.

The accident was the second involving a MAX 8, and occurred less than five months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in the Java Sea that killed 189, which was later found to have also been caused by MCAS. The crashes prompted a two-year worldwide grounding of the jet and an investigation into how the aircraft was approved for passenger service.

Accident

Flight 302 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya. The flight departed Addis Ababa at 08:38:34 local time (05:38:34 UTC) with 149 passengers and 8 crew on board.

Seconds after takeoff at 08:38:44, the left and right angle of attack (AOA) sensors immediately started disagreeing on each other's data. Due to the AOAs' erroneous and unstable data, the left stick shaker immediately activated. The airspeed indicators on both sides also disagreed with each other and the master caution and the anti-ice lights illuminated.

Approximately one minute into the flight, the first officer, following the captain's instructions, retracted the flaps. Within 10 seconds of this action, the autopilot disengaged, and the aircraft started to descend. The captain directed the first officer to report a "flight control" problem to the control tower.

By the second minute, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) had angled the horizontal stabilizer sharply downward, pitching the aircraft into a dive. Although the pilots managed to briefly counteract the nose-down attitude, the aircraft continued to lose altitude.

The first officer, correctly identifying that they were experiencing a runaway MCAS activation, called out "Stab trim cut-out!" The pilots toggled switches to disable the aircraft's electrical trim tab system, which also deactivated the MCAS software. Unlike previous 737 models, both switches disabled all electrical control of the stabilizer. Without the electric trim system, the other possible way to move the stabilizer is by cranking the trim wheel by hand, but because the stabilizer was located opposite to the elevator, strong aerodynamic forces were acting on it due to the pilots' inadequate thrust management. At the plane's high speed, there was further pressure on the stabilizer. The pilots' attempts to manually crank the stabilizer back into position failed.

Three minutes into the flight, with the aircraft continuing to lose altitude and accelerating beyond its safety limits, the captain instructed the first officer to request permission from air traffic control to return to the airport. Permission was granted, and the air traffic controllers diverted other approaching flights. Following instructions from air traffic control, they turned the aircraft to the east, and it rolled to the right. The right wing came to point down as the turn steepened.

About five minutes into the flight, having struggled to keep the plane's nose from diving further by manually pulling the yoke, the captain turned the electrical trim tab system back on in the hope that it would allow him to put the stabilizer back into neutral trim. However, in turning the trim system back on, he also reactivated the MCAS software, which reactivated nine seconds later and pushed the nose further down. The captain and first officer attempted to raise the nose by manually pulling their yokes, but the aircraft continued to plunge toward the ground, crashing 25 seconds after MCAS was reactivated and 34 seconds after the captain flipped the stab trim switches.

The aircraft disappeared from radar screens and crashed at 08:43:45, about six minutes after takeoff. Flight tracking data showed that the aircraft's altitude and rate of climb and descent were fluctuating. Several witnesses stated the plane trailed "white smoke" and made strange noises before crashing. The aircraft impacted the ground at nearly 700 mph. There were no survivors.

It crashed in the district of Gimbichu, Oromia Region, in a farm field near the town of Bishoftu, 62 km southeast of Bole International Airport. The impact created a crater about 28 m wide and 40 m long, and wreckage was driven up to 10 m deep into the soil. Wreckage was strewn around the field along with personal effects and body parts.