On March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport en route to Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. All 157 passengers and crew onboard perished, marking the deadliest aviation disaster in Ethiopian history. Among the victims were American citizens Antoine Lewis and Darcy Belengar.
The crash came just months after a similar incident involving Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia in October 2018, triggering a global outcry and grounding of the entire 737 MAX fleet for nearly two years.
MCAS System Under Scrutiny
Investigations later revealed that a key contributor to both crashes was a flawed software system known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The system, intended to automatically push the aircraft’s nose down under certain conditions, malfunctioned due to erroneous sensor data, overriding pilot commands and causing uncontrollable descents.
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