NEW YORK: Boeing’s MCAS anti-stall system, which was implicated in the October crash of a 737 MAX 8 airliner in Indonesia, was also activated shortly before a recent accident in Ethiopia, a source with knowledge of the investigation said on Friday.

The information is among the preliminary findings from the analysis of the “black boxes” retrieved from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed southeast of Addis Ababa on March 10, killing 157 people, the source said.

The information retrieved from the plane’s voice and data recorders was presented on Thursday to US authorities, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the source said.

However, the source said the investigation is still underway and the findings are not yet definitive. The information was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Boeing and the FAA declined to comment.

Ethiopian authorities have promised to submit the preliminary report on Flight 302 by mid-April but have already said that there are “clear similarities” between the two Max 8 crashes.

It was yet another blow to aviation giant Boeing, which just this week unveiled a fix to the Maneuvering Cha­racteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that Boeing designed to prevent stalls in its new plane.

The aviation company has tried to restore its battered reputation, even while continuing to insist that the MAX is safe.

The family of 31-year-old Jackson Musoni, a Rwandan citizen who died in the Ethiopian Airlines accident, filed a lawsuit against Boeing on Thursday in a court in Chicago, where the company has its corporate headquarters. The suit accuses the aircraft manufacturer of designing a defective system.

The MCAS, which lowers the aircraft’s nose if it detects a stall or loss of airspeed, was developed specifically for the 737 MAX, which has heavier engines than its predecessor, creating aerodynamic issues.

The initial investigation into the October Lion Air crash in Indonesia, which killed all 189 people on board, found that an “angle of attack” (AOA) sensor failed but continued to transmit erroneous information to the MCAS.

The pilot tried repeatedly to regain control and pull the nose up, but the plane crashed into the ocean.

The flight track of the doomed Ethiopia Airlines flight, which also crashed minutes after takeoff, “was very similar to Lion Air (indicating) there was very possibly a link between the two flights,” FAA acting chief Daniel Elwell told Congress this week.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2019