How Greek man missed ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines flight

…As investigators recover flight, black box recorders

Doosuur Iwambe, Abuja & Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo, Lagos

A Greek man, Antonis Mavropoulos, has narrated how he missed the ill – fated Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in Addis Ababa after arriving two minutes late at the boarding gate.

Mr. Mavropoulos, president of the International Solid Waste Association, said he was initially angry as the airline staff had not helped him and he subsequently missed the flight.

In a Facebook post entitled: “My lucky day,” Mavropoulos said he was put onto the next flight to Nairobi and only found out about the crash when he was stopped from boarding his next flight.

“I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time,’’ he said.

He was taken to a police station for questioning when an officer told him that he was the only passenger booked on the flight that did not board.

Meanwhile, investigators have recovered the two black box recorders and flight recorders from the crashed plane. The devices recovered from the crash site are the Boeing 737 Max 8’s cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder.

The Daily Times recalls that the plane en route from Addis Ababa to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, crashed six minutes after take-off, killing all 157 people on board.

Several airlines have grounded the model following the disaster.

The months-old aircraft came down near the town of Bishoftu, 60km (37 miles) south-east of the capital on Sunday.

There were more than 30 nationalities on board the flight, including Nigerians, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Canadians and Britons. The two Nigerians on board the ill –fated flight are Prof. Pius Adesanmi and Amb. Abiodun Bashua.

Ethiopian Airlines CEO, Tewolde Gebremariam, had told journalists that the cause of the disaster is not yet clear. He, however, noted that the pilot had reported difficulties and had asked to return to Addis Ababa.

“At this stage, we can’t rule out anything. We can’t also attribute the cause to anything because we will have to comply with the international regulation to wait for the investigation,” he said.