FILE PHOTO – Ethiopian Federal policemen stand near engine parts at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
March 18, 2019
By Tim Hepher
PARIS (Reuters) – Investigators probing the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX jet eight days ago have found strong similarities in the ‘angle of attack’ data recorded by the doomed aircraft’s cockpit recorder and data from a Lion Air jet of the same model that crashed in October, a person familiar with the matter said.
Graphs of the two sets of data are “very, very simliar,” the person said on Monday, asking not to be identified because the matter is still in the early stages of investigation.
The angle is a key flight parameter that must remain narrow enough to preserve lift and avoid an aerodynamic stall.
A flight deck computer’s response to readings from an apparently faulty angle-of-attack sensor is at the centre of an ongoing probe into the Lion Air disaster.
The similarity between the two data readings on the Ethiopian and Lion Air flights will be subjected to further investigation, the person said.
Ethiopian and other investigators were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Editing by Georgina Prodhan)
