An Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet bound for Nairobi has crashed shortly after take-off from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, killing all 157 passengers on board.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 left Bole airport at 8.38am (05:38 GMT)on Sunday morning, bound for Nairobi, lost contact with the control tower just a couple of minutes later, and crashed six minutes after take-off. It was 8:44 am (05:44 GMT). The fact that something was not going the right way was quickly clear by a couple of signals. The plane was struggling to gain altitude; four minutes after takeoff it turned straight, when it should have turned right. Another 120 seconds and the new Boing 737 flight ET302 crashed. On board there were 149 passengers from 35 countries, a passenger with a UN passport and eight crew members. "There are no survivors," the airline tweeted soon after the crash. The airport control towerreported that the pilot immediately stated that he had difficulty maneuvering the plane because he received anomalous and erroneous information about its speed; aflaw in the software that manages the data related to the protection system of the so-called Fight Envelope Protection.The plane literally crumbled on an area equivalent to two football fields and the wreckage was found up to 3 km from the site of the impact. The aircraft crashed with such speed and violence that it looked more like a missile than a plane trying to glide.

Israeli experts already present on the spot will try to rebuild the bodies with DNA samples that the relatives of the victims are already sending to Ethiopia.

The data of the two aerial black boxes, Flight Data Recorder (FDR) andcockpit voice recorder (CVR)albeit damaged, will provide the exact dynamics of the incident.

The aviation industry trembles in the "day after" crash

Mary Schiavo, former US Transportation Inspector General, told CNN microphones: "We are facing a model that has fallen twice in a year, and this is a wake-up call." In both cases, including the one that crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, dynamic was identical: the pilot asked to return after take-off and after recording "an unstable vertical speed". Even in that case the plane crashed 13 minutes after taking off, while the aircraft had reached an altitude of only 5,200 feet, and there were no survivors.

The plane may have stalled

The software records all data relating to the angle of attack of the wing, i.e. the acute angle determined by the wind direction. This happens automatically thanks to two probes that, after having detected the data, transmit them to the computer cards. Here the data is processed and sent directly to the on-board systems. This means that when the program detects an anomalous datum, and if the data indicate the risk that the aircraft may stall, the software does not act on the flight controls, but on the "movable horizontal stabilizer", the mobile structures that are situated on the tail system. By moving them, the system forces the nose of the aircraft to point downwards: when the aircraft drops, the angle of attack becomes lower, and according to the system the situation at that point is resolved.At this point, if the system behaves as if the plane were stalled, but it is not, it is up to the crew to deactivate the system manually. In the case of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, the relatively low altitude at the time when the problem related to the software would have occurred, it may not have given pilots the time necessary to intervene manually.

Countries that have grounded the Boeing 737 MAX 8.

A host of countries outlaw the use of Boeing's state-of-the-art aircraft in their airspace in the wake of Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines plane crash.

China was the first country to ban the model on Monday, followed shortly by U.K., who became the first European country to ban the aircraft from their airspace on Tuesday.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 will no longer fly - at least temporarily - to European skies. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has decided to close the airspace after many countries have already and independently imposed the alt to the aircraft following the Ethiopian accident last Sunday. All flights of the Boeing 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9 in Europe starting from 7 pm on 12 March will be banned. Partners who followed in areItaly, Germany, France, Ireland, Austria, Holland and Belgium.

In addition to EU countries, other states in the world have announced the ban on the Boeing model, and several airlines have announced that they will leave the aircraft on the ground.Ethiopia, China, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Cayman Islands and Singapore have temporarily banned all Boeing 737 Max planes from entering and leaving their countries.Oman became the first country on the Arabian Peninsula to ban the aircraft, soon followed by the United Arab Emirates. During the night the ban also came from New Zealand and Fiji and two non-EU countries: Serbia and Turkey.Boeing 737 Max on the ground also in India, Norway, Hong Kong, Guinea and Lebanon, Morocco, Vietnam, Thailand. The aviation authorities of the various States are waiting for "further information on the safety of these aircraft", before deciding on a possible release.

Some airlines have also decided to ban the aircraft from their skies: Singapore’s Silk Air, India’s Jet Air, Mexico’s Aeroméxico, Argentina’s AerolìneasArgentinas, Brazil’s Gol, Mongolia’s MIAT, Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc, Turkish airlines, South Korea’s Eastar Jet, Canada’s Sunwing Airlines, Russia’s S7, Cayman Islands’s Cayman Airways, South Africa’s Comair, Iceland’s Icelandair, Fiji’s Fiji Airways, Germany’s Tuifly.

US position

As the number of airlines grounding the fleet continues to grow, other carriers, including American Airlines and Southwest, say they will continue to fly the model. As the United Stateshas asked the Chicago-based manufacturing company to update the software for that model plane, the company has announced that "by April" it will update the software of the entire fleet of its 737s.Southwest Airlines pilots union also issued a statement Monday expressing their confidence in the safety of the MAX based on analysis of data from 41,000 flights. With 34 737 MAX 8s in its fleet, Southwest is the largest operator of the plane.

The Boeing 737 MAX was billed as a more economical version of the manufacturer’s long-standing 737 short-haul aircraft series and performed its first flight in January 2016. The 200-seat Boeing has been a popular plane since it came on the market, with more than 4,000 planes ordered within the first six months, for an estimated business volume of around 600 billion.At the time of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, nearly 350 Boeing 737 Max 8 were in operation around the world. After the crash, 146 aircrafts out of 350 have been pulled from use, a data close to 40% of overall fleet.

The Federal Aviation Administration said new information about Sunday's crash "indicates some similarities" between the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight and the Lion air crash in Indonesia; the two disasters that "warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause that needs to be better understood and addressed."

Thus, on Wednesday, even the United States stopped the Boeing 737 Max; after the initiative taken by Canada, the last of the countries to introduce the stop, the US remained isolated. But soon the announcement came from Donald Trump with an "emergency order to keep all 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9" on the ground, with immediate effect.

"Pilots have been notified, airlines have been all notified. The safety of the American people and all people are our paramount concern," Trump said from the White House.

The US Federal Administration Aviation initially stated that "there is no basis for ordering grounding." Boeing, in a statement, explained that it supports Trump's decision while continuing to have absolute confidence in the 737 Max. "After consultations" with the American authorities, "Boeing recommended the temporary suspension of the entire fleet of 371737 Max aircraft, for the sake of plenty of precaution and to reassure the public," reads security.

The president said that the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing "agree with the decision".

The grounding will remain in effect indefinitely, the FAA said, pending the examination of flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.

The black boxes will be examined in France

In the meanwhile, the black boxes of the crashed aircraft will be analyzed in France after the refusal of the German federal agency for aircraft accidents, which declined the request for "lack of the necessary software".

This was announced by Bea, le Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses(BEA) pour la Sécurité de l'Aviationcivile, the French governmental agency in charge of investigating air accidents. Bea is also the agency responsible for aviation accidents that occur in countries where local authorities are unable to carry out an investigation, as Ethiopia had announced that it does not have the necessary technology and the equipment to analyze the content of the black boxes.

Conclusion

A global grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 airliner is drawing new attention to the close ties between the manufacturer and the Trump administration, which is so far refusing calls to join every other country in suspending use of the plane across the US.President Trump has touted Boeing sales across the globe (including two weeks ago in Vietnam), and has cultivated close relationships with the company’s executives.The company has spent millions over the past years lobbying decision-makers in Washington.

Now, as Boeing faces crumbling public confidence in one of its marquee products, those ties are being viewed in a new light. Even under increasing pressure from airline labor groups and lawmakers to ban the planes, the Federal Administration Aviation has confirmed that the 737 Max 8 model remains “safe to fly”, and has undertaken to act at a later time, should it deem it necessary.

US President spoke by phone with the company CEO, who assured him that the plane was safe, despite the two recent crashes. Shortly after the call, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it remained confident in the planes, even as governors across the world grounded them.

The company's headquarters in Seattle spent Sunday reassuringmajor airlines. Meanwhile, on Monday, Wall Streetregistered the worst collapse in the stock market ever since the attack on the twin towers, despite reassurances from the manufacturer and the FAA.