Ethiopian Airlines pilot reportedly hit trouble right after taking off

A Boeing 737 MAX plane.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Just one minute after taking off from Addis Ababa on Sunday, the pilot of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 reported a "flight control" problem, a person who reviewed air traffic communications told The New York Times Thursday.

The brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft crashed while en route to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board. The person said that three minutes into the flight, the pilot sounded panicked, and requested permission to return to the airport. By that point, air traffic controllers had already noticed that the plane had accelerated to an unusually high speed, and was erratically moving up and down. Within five minutes, contact with the jet was lost.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.