Ethiopia crashed plane’s black box retrieved

February 7, 2010 (ADDIS ABABA) — The Ethiopian airlines said on Sunday that the flight recorder from its crashed passenger plane is recovered from near crash site.

Boeing 737-800 flight ET-409, bound for Addis Ababa, on January 25 plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, few minutes after taking off from Beirut airport in a raging thunderstorm killing all 90 people on board.

The black box was recovered earlier today by a search team from the Lebanese Navy after almost two weeks of tough efforts. Searchers are said to have continued their efforts to recover a second flight recorder, the cockpit voice recorder.

Black boxes record pilot communications and technical data such as the aircraft’s altitude, speed and trajectory, which could help investigators, determine the reason for the crash.

The boxes are designed to sink and not float to make them easier to locate. The recovery of the black box from the Ethiopian Airlines jet will answer the mystery behind crash cause.

The 64-year old Ethiopian Airlines is one of Africa’s fastest growing airlines and has had a leading good safety reputation. Last year it won over four international awards.

It serves 56 international destinations with 210 weekly international departures from its Addis Ababa hub and a total of 555 weekly international departures worldwide.

Recently in its website the company says that it hopes to increase revenue to one billion dollars and to increase the number of destinations it serves to 60 in 2010.

The latest crash was the first involving Ethiopian Airlines since 1988, excluding a fatal hijacking in 1996.

In November 1996 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked between Addis Ababa and Nairobi by three Ethiopians seeking political asylum. The aircraft crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros when it ran out of fuel, killing 125 of the 175 people on board.

In September 1988, one of the airline’s Boeing made a crash landing at Bahar Dar city in Ethiopia after birds hamper engine from functioning properly. Thirty one of the 105 people on board were killed.

(ST)