ET 302 Flight Remembered

Today marks a year ET 302 flight crashed.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya . On 10 March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft which operated the flight crashed near the town of Bishoftu six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people aboard.

Flight 302 is the deadliest accident involving an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft to date, surpassing  the fatal hijacking of Flight 961 resulting in a crash near  the Comoros in 1996. It is also the deadliest aircraft accident to occur in Ethiopia, surpassing the crash of an Ethiopian Air Force Antonov An-26 in 1982, which killed 73.

The airline stated that the flight's 149 passengers had 35 different nationalities. Crash victim positive identification was announced on September 13, 2019. Nearly a hundred disaster victim identification (DVI) experts from 14 countries supported the Interpol Incident Response Team (IRT) mission.

Passengers by nationality
Nationality
Deaths
Kenya 32
Canada 18
Ethiopia 9
China 8
Italy 8
United States 8
France 7
United Kingdom 7
Egypt 6
Germany 5
India 4
Slovakia 4
Austria 3
Russia 3
Sweden 3
Israel 2
Morocco 2
Poland 2
Spain 2
Belgium 1
Djibouti 1
Indonesia 1
Ireland 1
Mozambique 1
Nepal 1
Nigeria 1
Norway 1
Rwanda 1
Saudi Arabia 1
Serbia 1
Somalia 1
Sudan 1
Togo 1
Uganda 1
Yemen 1
Total 149

All passengers and crew on board, 157 in total, were killed in the accident. Many of the passengers were travelling to Nairobi to attend the fourth session  of the United Nations Environment Assembly. A total of 22 people affiliated with the United Nations (UN) were killed, including seven World Food Programme staff, along with staff of the United Nations office in Nairobi, the International Telecommunications Union, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8 model first flew on 29 January 2016 and entered service in 2017, making it one of the newest aircraft in Boeing 's commercial airliner offerings, and the newest generation of Boeing 737.

As of February 2019, 376 aircraft of this model have been produced and one other had crashed, Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia in October 2018.

Following the accident, the 737 MAX series of aircraft was grounded worldwide by various airlines and government regulators around the world.