The final report into the fatal 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX has attracted criticism from investigators in the US and France.
Both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) issued statements in the days after the document’s release on December 26, questioning the probe’s findings and suggesting amendments and additions to the text.
The conclusion of the investigation comes nearly three years after the crash of Flight 302, a 737 MAX 8 which impacted terrain shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 people on board.
On December 27, 2022, the NTSB took the “unusual step” of publishing its comments on the report after Ethiopia’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (EAIB) failed to include them in its final report.
Citing the provisions of International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 13, the agency criticised the EAIB for only including a “hyperlink in [its] final report to an earlier and now outdated version of the NTSB’s comments”.
The French BEA joined its US counterpart in critiquing the report when it released its comments on January 3.
“The BEA considers that the operational and crew performance a…
