French investigators were examining the black boxes from the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft that crashed in Ethiopia on Thursday, as the ban on the model went worldwide after President Donald Trump added the US to countries that have grounded the aircraft. France''s BEA air safety agency confirmed it has received the recorders from the plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing all 157 people aboard.
BEA investigators will try to retrieve information from the cockpit voice and flight data recorders, which were damaged in the disaster. Thousands of kilometres away, distraught families were demanding answers as they visited the deep black crater where the plane smashed into a field outside the capital, disintegrating on impact. The plane was less than four months old when it went down just six minutes into its flight to Nairobi.
Ethiopian Airlines, Africa''s largest carrier, sent the boxes to France because it does not have the equipment to analyse the data. The information that black boxes contain helps explain 90 percent of all crashes, according to aviation experts. On Wednesday, US authorities said new evidence showed similarities between the Ethiopia crash and that of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia in October that claimed the lives of 189 people. The Federal Aviation Administration said findings from the crash site near Addis and "newly refined satellite data" warranted "further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents".
An FAA emergency order grounded 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft until further notice, effectively taking the aircraft out of the skies globally. The move came after a growing number of airlines and countries had already decided not to fly the planes or ban them from their airspace until it was ascertained there are no safety issues. Trump told reporters the "safety of the American people and all peoples is our paramount concern".