Following the crash of Ethiopian Airline Boeing 737 aircraft enroute Nairobi, a Twitter user has revealed a warning to the airline about the security feature of its Boeing 737-MAX that was not disclosed to the pilots.
Writing via @advmtw, the Twitter claimed to have sent a mail to the airline on January 15, 2019, complaining about the new security system added to Boeing 737-MAX without adequately informing the pilots.
The complainant quoted a report on Daily Sabah, a Turkish news platform, that claimed that many pilots were not informed about the new features of the Boeing 737 airplanes.
This mail was prompted by the crash of a Boeing 737-Max in October 2018, which killed all its 189 passengers.
In the mail to the Ethiopian Airline, the complainant said: “I wanted to express my concerns regarding the alarming reports about a lion air 737 max went down on the 29th of October 2018. Indeed, event though this is still an ongoing investigation, latest reports say that the new anti stalling system (MCAS) onboard 737 max might be one of the reasons which caused the accident.
“An American Airlines spokesman even addressed the issue: ‘We value our partnership with Boeing, but were unaware of some of the functionality of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) installed on Max 8’.
“I took time to write this email because this is about safety and I strongly believe that safety should be first priority of everyone in the airline industry.”
The Twitter user said a response never came from Ethiopian Airlines.
Ethiopian Airlines has not yet responded to the Twitter user’s claim; however, it has issued a few terse statements, six in all, named Accident Bulletin, the latest being an announcement that “the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder(CVR) of ET302 have been Recovered”.
The airline earlier confirmed that 149 passengers and eight crew members were aboard, as the plane took off from Addis Ababa at 8:38am local time (05:38 GMT) but crashed six minutes later.
Two Nigerians, Professor Pius Adesanmi and AMbassador Abiodun Bashua, were victims of the crash.
Following the crash, Ethiopian Airlines, as well as China and South Korea, has banned the use of the Boeing 737-800MAX aircraft.
