Pilots followed emergency procedures: Ethiopian airlines on Flight ET302

Muscat: Ethiopian Airlines, on Thursday issued a statement on the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, on 10 March this year, which took the lives of all 157 passengers and crew on board when the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet crashed just after take off from Addis Ababa.

In its statement, shared on Twitter, the airlines said that according to the preliminary report, the pilots commanding flight ET302 followed emergency procedures recommended by Boeing and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to handle the situation. "Despite their hard work and full compliance with the emergency procedures, it was very unfortunate that they could not recover the airplane from the persistence of nose diving. As the investigation continues with more detailed analysis, as usual we will continue with our full cooperation with the investigation team," the airlines statement said.

News of the crash, combined with the crash of a Lion Air 737 Max 8 last year, have put the American plane manufacturer under huge stress as the crashes were linked to a new flight control system that was installed on these jets. Worldwide, several governments have issued orders to ground this series of jets, leading to flight cancellations and rescheduling, causing havoc in the aviation sector of some countries.

In their statement, Group CEO, Tewolde GebreMariam defended Ethiopian Airlines pilots and said, "We are very proud of our pilots compliances to follow the emergency procedures and high level of professional performances in such extremely difficult situations. We are also very proud of our Global standard Pilot Training Center and the Ethiopian Aviation Academy which is one of the largest and most modern in the world equipped with state of the art and latest training technologies."

The company offered its condolences yet again to the families of those who lost their lives onboard the flight and said that it would double its efforts to win the confidence of its customers and ensure safety remains their top priority. "My highest appreciation also goes to my 16,000 colleagues at Ethiopian Airlines for their resilience, high standards of professionalism and their continued commitment for operational excellence and their award winning customer services which enabled us to continue our business with out any operational disruption, flight delays nor flight cancellations," GebreMariam said.

According to the Ethiopian government, the full report on the crash would be shared by the Government within one year. The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which Boeing installed to prevent stalling of an aeroplane, would recieve a software fix according to Boeing, which announced it last month.