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The customary Ethiopian mourning ritual prohibits
people from listening to music or watching
television. All media outlets are turned off, often
for several weeks.
Gripped with uncertainty, yet unable to give up and
start mourning, the family, friends and neighbours
of Seble Gebretsadik, 26, one of the flight
attendants aboard Ethiopian Flight 409, spent days
glued to their television screens at the home of
Seble’s parents in the Semien Mezegaja area
tolerating programmes they had no appetite for in
the hope of getting a miraculous piece of good news.
They browsed various media on the Internet for the
latest developments.
On
Wednesday, January 27, 2010, they turned their TV on
for the eight o’clock news. The first headline was
all about flight ET409 but delivered nothing new.
They turned the volume down and waited in painful
patience until an image flashed on the screen with
the picture of the aircraft, thinking there might be
something new. But that was only a message of
condolence from the Ethiopian Telecommunications
Corporation.
On
the same day, at the other end of town, in Hayat
Homes of the Yeka District, the family and friends
of another flight attendant, Gelila Gedion, had
already given up hope.
The TV was shut off here; the mood was that of a
typical mourning home.
The bitter truth was broken on Friday, January 29
for all families who had resisted believing the
truth they had suspected. Their loved ones would not
come back home; for some even their bodies would not
be recovered.
Some of the crew who perished had not even thought
they would be on that flight. They were covering for
colleagues who had other engagements.
The pilot, Habtamu Benti, who rose to the rank of
captain for the 737 two years ago, was replacing
another captain, Amaha Fikru, who was also replacing
another pilot who was scheduled to fly the craft.
His co-pilot, Allula Tamerat, was also replacing a
colleague.
On
the other hand, however, a junior flight attendant,
Brehan Yohannes, survived because she was taken off
the Beirut flight and assigned to a Dubai flight
because of a crew shortage on the latter.
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft had to, as a result, fly
to Beirut, 2,768km, deficit of one flight attendant
on Sunday, January 24, 2010.
It
arrived at Beirut-Rafik Hariri International Airport
after a flight of four hours and 40 minutes and as
Girma Wake, CEO of Ethiopian, later said, the
aircraft had been serviced on December 25, 2009.
Historically, though, the B737 family of aircraft
has been problematic. The first incident was in 1991
as a 737-200, crashed in Colorado (US), killing 25
people. Notably, in 1994, another 737-300 US
aircraft crashed near Pittsburgh(US) in which
strangely enough a plane fell out of the sky from
about 1,829 metres.
The Kenyan Airways accident followed in 2007 which
was taking off in thunderstorms and heavy rain from
Cameroon, a situation somewhat similar to the
fateful Ethiopian flight. That crash killed all 114
people on board. The latest involved a Turkish
Airline aircraft which went down just a kilometre
from its destination, the Amsterdam Airport.
These problems were said to be related to the rudder
which were said to have been resolved after Boeing
instructed all owners of these aircraft to get them
upgraded.
Flight 409, which took off from the Beirut airport
on Monday was not supposed to have problems related
to its rudder, and such aircraft were also believed
to have no problems taking off in stormy weather.
This, in fact, was one of the reasons that the
Lebanese officials gave as to why they let the
aircraft go in that weather. No other aircraft was
given warnings related to the weather that day,
according to these officials.
However, neither claimed high quality of the
aircraft nor the safety record of Ethiopian could
save the lives of the 90 people on board, including
eight crew members, 23 Ethiopians, 51 Lebanese, a
Turkish, French, two British, a Russian, a Canadian,
a Syrian and an Iraqi, as well as the body of a
young Ethiopian lady, Selam, who had been a
housemaid until she died in a car accident.
The only thing known for sure, so far, is that the
aircraft was seen burning in the rainy sky as it
dived down into the Mediterranean Sea about two
minutes after takeoff.
On
Monday morning, family support centres were set up
both at the Beirut and Addis Abeba airports. At Bole
Airport people who could name anyone of the
passengers as relatives were admitted to the centre,
where they would spend the rest of the day regarding
rescue exercises at the sea.
One person, Bizuayehu Marma, was not admitted.
Bizuayehu had been in Ethiopia only a month after
returning from Beirut where she had been a housemaid
at a salary of 150 dollars a month. While she was
there, she had become friends with Selam, whom she
knew only by her first name. Having heard about the
death her friend (in a car accident), she had come
to the airport to mourn when the body was delivered
to the family. However, she was not admitted to the
centre because, she said, the security officers told
her they did not have any names for dead bodies on
their list.
“I
could not believe this was happening,” she said.
Another one of the Ethiopians onboard was someone
who had just been released after nine months in
prison because her papers were not in order, another
Ethiopian in Beirut said.
Most of the 23 Ethiopians aboard the flight were
among the estimated 20,000 domestics working in
Beirut.
As
of the second day, people stayed in their homes
contacting the call centre via telephone for any
information.
Pending the discovery of evidence to the contrary,
the B737-800, which Ethiopian leased from CIT Group
Inc, a New York based company in the business of
leasing aircraft, was safe and sound. This
particular piece of machinery was manufactured in
2002.
The safety record of Ethiopian, includes only three
major accidents since it was established in 1945,
all of which occurred in the second half of its life
to date.
The first involved a B737 which crash-landed at
Bahir Dar International Airport after birds flew
into one of its engines. The second was the hijacked
B767 which crashed into the Indian Ocean off the
Comoros Islands in 1996, where only 50 of the 175
people onboard survived.
Unfortunately for the plane, Habtamu was
commanding, there were no survivors.
According to colleagues, he was also a careful pilot
in a career that spanned 20 years. The only incident
they remember was when he turned a flight to Assossa
back to Addis Abeba because he would not land the
aircraft on a muddy airport. Captain Habtamu, who
was flying a Fokker 50 at the time, had talked to
Fortune over the incident which occurred in 2007.
“The aircraft can not land here because it is
raining. The flight is thus cancelled and we are
flying back to Addis Abeba,” was the message he
conveyed to the passengers of that flight.
“We announced the cancellation of the flight because
we did not have appropriate meteorological
information about the place before landing,” he told
Fortune after the incident.
“It was a privilege knowing him,” said Enbafrash
Dawit, a lead flight attendant.
An
incident fondly remembered of him was the day he
became a captain. He is said to have celebrated by
taking his guard and housemaid out to a restaurant
for a meal of kitfo.
“They could tell you more about him than anyone
else,” said a lady who was a close friend.
His friends find it hard to believe that a piloting
error could have caused the crash. A statement being
claimed as such by the Lebanese Transport Ministry
had everyone baffled, although there was as yet no
confirmation of the story. The ministry released a
statement saying that the aircraft had started
flying in the wrong direction. When the pilot was
warned about it and told to adjust his direction, he
did not respond. Rather, the statement said, the
aircraft made a strange and fast turn in the wrong
direction and disappeared from radar.
This message was protested both by Girma Wake and
later by Seyoum Mesfin, the Ethiopian Foreign
Minister.
“I
do not want to speculate on the cause of the
accident,” Girma said, talking to journalists in
Addis Abeba on the day of the crash.
“The aviation discipline is such that when there is
an accident, you do not rush to conclusions; you
have to wait for the investigation to be completed,”
he later said following Lebanese Transport Minister
Ghazi Aridi’s statement.
An
agreement was reached to bring an end to all
speculation until evidence was available, Seyoum
said after leading an Ethiopian delegation to
Lebanon.
The initial hypothesis that the crash might have
been related to weather conditions was downplayed by
several experts in the industry.
“Like other airliners, the Boeing 737 is equipped
with its own onboard weather radar which the pilot
can use to avoid flying into thunder bolts,” said
Habtemariam Tereda (Col), who has been in the
airline industry for the last 40 years and is
currently a flight instructor at Abyssinia Flight
Services. “If there is lightning, what you do is
check the situation and find a way around or return
back to land.”
Lebanon immediately set up a rescue team, led by
Aridi. The same afternoon, Ethiopian Airlines
dispatched to the scene a team of 14 people from the
Safety and Emergency Response Department, Medical
Unit, Flight Operations Department, Maintenance and
Engineering Department, Chief Airline Security
Office and Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority.
Ethiopian also sent out a team of eight Aircraft
Accident Handling and Crisis Management experts from
BLAKE Emergency Services in London to assist in the
rescue operation.
The rescue operation, which involved Beirut based UN
peacekeeping helicopters and ships as well as a US
naval vessel, has been searching for the wreckage of
the B737, since Monday. On Tuesday, the search was
temporarily suspended because of bad weather.
The location of the black box, which normally
releases 37.5kHz of frequency for 30 days, was
detected on Wednesday at a depth of 1,300 metres.
This was confirmed by Ethiopian on Thursday. However
by Friday night it had not been extracted from the
sea.
Search has continued for wreckage and bodies.
There has been no update on the number of bodies
that have been found after it was reported that 25
had been found by Monday evening, of which six were
Ethiopians. The search has continued. Meanwhile,
Ethiopian has asked families of victims to undergo
DNA tests to help identify the bodies as of
Saturday, January 30, 2010.
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