Ethiopian Airlines have grounded its entire Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet following the recent crash of one of its planes that has claimed the lives of 157 passengers that were on board.
“Following the tragic accident of ET 302… Ethiopian Airlines has decided to ground all B-737-8 MAX fleet effective yesterday, March 10, until further notice,” the state-owned carrier said in a statement released on Twitter.
“Although we don’t yet know the cause of the accident, we have to decide to ground the particular fleet as an extra safety precaution,” said the airline, Africa’s largest.
All 157 people on board died when Nairobi-bound Flight ET 302 came down just six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa.
It ploughed into a field near Tulu Fara village outside the town of Bishoftu, some 60km southeast of the Ethiopian capital.
China also grounded its fleet of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 in the aftermath.
Ethiopian Airlines has a fleet of four 737 MAX 8 jets, not counting the one that crashed on Sunday, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.
The plane crash was the second of a Boeing 737 MAX jet since one operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air crashed in October