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 has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.