Ethiopian airline flight et 302 when stars went down at sunrise

Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 was a scheduled international passenger flight that operated from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Nairobi, Kenya. The flight was operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, registration ET-AVJ.

On March 10, 2019, the flight took off from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport at 08:38 local time (03:38 UTC) and crashed near the town of Bishoftu, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Addis Ababa, at 08:44 local time (03:44 UTC). All 157 people on board were killed in the crash.

The crash occurred at sunrise, around 6:30 am local time, when the sun was rising over the horizon. The flight was in the ascent phase, climbing to an altitude of around 15,000 feet (4,572 meters), when it suddenly pitched down and crashed.

The cause of the crash was later determined to be a combination of factors, including a faulty sensor, a software bug, and pilot error. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft was equipped with a new automated flight control system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was designed to prevent the aircraft from stalling. However, the system was found to be flawed and was unable to properly respond to the faulty sensor data, leading to a series of events that ultimately caused the crash.

The crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 was the second fatal crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in less than six months, following the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018. The two crashes led to a global grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX fleet and a major crisis for Boeing and the aviation industry.