Final moments of Ethiopian Airlines plane before crash

AFP file

Two eyewitnesses have given a chilling account of the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and said the aircraft "swerved and dipped" with smoke billowing from it, moments before it crashed.
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One eyewitness, Gebeyehu Fikadu, 25, said, "Before it crashed the plane was swerving and dipping with a lot of smoke coming from the back and also making a very loud unpleasant sound before hitting the ground," NYPost quoted CNN reports. The eyewitness' account came on Monday when officials revealed that the damaged black box and cockpit voice recorder both were recovered.
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While another eyewitness, Tamrat Abera, also said that smoke was pouring out of the back of the plane before it crashed. "Before falling down, the plane rotated two times in the air and it had some smoke coming from the back, then it hit the ground and exploded," Abera said. "When the villagers and I arrived at the site, there was nothing except some burning and flesh," he added.
According to flight data, the Boeing 737 MAX 8, flying from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, had wildly gained and lost altitude before it crashed killing all 157 people aboard. Ethiopian Airlines decided to ground its fleet of MAX 8s beginning Sunday in the aftermath of the tragic plane crash.
"Although we don't yet know the cause of the accident, we had to decide to ground the particular fleet as extra safety precaution," the airline said. The plane crashed six minutes after taking off from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, and was the second crash in five months involving a MAX 8 - a single-aisle model that was introduced in 1967.