Crash of Ethiopian Airliner of Lebanon. No hints of terrorism of foul play, so far

Flight 409 was seen going down in flames this morning. I have
waited to see if there any reports of terrorism or foul play but so
far nothing suspicious has surfaced. I will be following this story
for critical updates but for now sounds like this crash was a
weather related crash. In this region of the world one has to keep
all avenues open until the facts come home.




By Massoud A. Derhally and Jason McLure




 An Ethiopian Airlines plane with 90 people on board crashed into the Mediterranean Sea after taking off from Beirut, Lebanon, early this morning.

Wreckage from Ethiopian Airlines flight 409

washed up on shore and being collected.

Eleven bodies have been recovered and no survivors have been found, Lebanese army Brigadier Saleh Haj Suleiman said by phone. Search operations are ongoing about 8 kilometers (5 miles) off the coast, he said.

“Weather conditions are very harsh,” Suleiman said. “We hope, God willing, to find some survivors.” The passengers on flight ET409 included 51 Lebanese and 23 Ethiopians, the carrier said on its Web site. The eight crew members were all Ethiopian.

The Boeing Co. 737-800 left Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport for Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, at 2:35 a.m. and lost contact with air traffic control shortly afterward. Flames were seen coming from the aircraft before the crash near Na’ameh town, south of Beirut, according to the state-run Lebanese National News Agency. Lebanon has been lashed with heavy rains, thunderstorms and high winds for much of the past two days.

“It was manageable weather otherwise the crew wouldn’t have taken off,” Chief Executive Officer Girma Wake told reporters at a briefing in Addis Ababa. “On behalf of Ethiopian Airlines and myself I am sorry that this happened.”

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said terrorism was unlikely to have been the cause during a press conference in Beirut.

Boeing Investigation

The other passengers onboard the plane comprised two Britons and one each from Turkey, France, Russia, Canada, Syria and Iraq, state-owned Ethiopian Airlines said. The Lebanese National News Agency put the number of Lebanese citizens onboard at 54, saying that some held dual citizenship.

The wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon was among those on the plane, said Anne-Charlotte Dommartin, a spokeswoman for the French embassy in Beirut. The flight was due to take off at 2:10 a.m.

At Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, people have been told to wait for further information on possible survivors, said Tedros Abdissa, whose 35-year-old cousin Tegist Shokur was onboard the flight.

Possible Survivors

“She was a domestic servant and her employer beat her up so she chose to leave,” he said in an interview at the airport.

The crashed plane was made in 2002 and leased from CIT Aerospace in September, Girma said.

Addis Ababa-based Ethiopian Airlines said it had dispatched investigators to the scene of the crash. Boeing is working with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to assist Lebanese authorities with the investigation, spokeswoman Sandy Angers said in an e-mailed reply to Bloomberg News questions.

Ethiopian Airlines operates a fleet of 37 planes, most of them Boeing aircraft, according to its Web site. It also has orders outstanding for planes including 10 787 Dreamliners, 12 Airbus SAS A350s and 5 Boeing 777s, according to the site. The airline and Boeing announced a deal for 10 737s on Jan. 22.

The carrier hasn’t suffered a fatal crash since November 1996, when 125 people died during a hijacking of a Boeing 767 bound for Abidjan, Ivory Coast, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.


Bloomberg News