Ethiopian plane crashes off Beirut, 21 bodies found

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – An Ethiopian Airlines plane with  90 people on board crashed into the sea minutes after taking off  from Beirut in stormy weather early today and the airline’s  chief executive said there was no word of survivors.
Flight ET409, a Boeing 737-800, heading for Addis Ababa,  disappeared off the radar some five minutes after taking off at  2:37 a.m. (0037 GMT) during a thunderstorm and rough seas.  Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said he did not think the  plane had been brought down deliberately.
“As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely. The investigation  will uncover the cause,” Suleiman told a news conference.
Twenty-one bodies have so far been recovered near the crash  site three-and-a-half km (two miles) west of the coastal village  of Na’ameh. Eighty-three passengers and seven crew were on the  flight, Transport Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said at the airport.
Ethiopian Airlines CEO Girma Wake said he had spoken with  Lebanese authorities who had no word of survivors.
Television footage showed the remains of mangled airplane  seats and luggage washed up on the shore south of Beirut where  the airport’s main runway is located. Lebanese army patrol  boats, helicopters and divers were searching frantically in a  small area off Na’ameh, 10 km (six miles) south of the capital.
According to one source, residents on the coast saw a “ball  of fire” crashing off Na’ameh.
Fifty-four of those on board were Lebanese, 22 were  Ethiopian, two were British and there were also Canadian,  Russian, French, Iraqi and Syrian nationals.
Marla Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon  Denis Pietton, was on the plane, the French embassy said.
The Lebanese government declared a day of mourning. Prime  Minister Saad al-Hariri visited the airport to meet distraught  relatives waiting for news of survivors, some of whom were angry  that the plane was allowed to take off in bad weather.
“They should have delayed the flight for an hour or two to  protect the passengers. There had been strong lightning bolts  and we hear that lighting strikes at planes especially during  take-offs,” a relative of one of the passengers told a local  television station.
Wake said he did not think the crew would have taken off in  dangerous weather conditions.
“There was bad weather. How bad it is, I will not be able to  say. But, from what I see, probably it was manageable weather  otherwise the crew would not have taken off,” he told reporters  in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
The U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, Cypriot police, the  British military stationed in Cyprus and the U.S. navy provided  helicopters, ships and divers to aid search and rescue.
State-owned Ethiopian Airlines has positioned itself as a  major player in international air traffic in Africa and has  recently expanded its Asian network.
Wake said the plane, built in 2002, last underwent a  maintenance check on Dec. 25 and no technical problems were  found. It had been leased by Ethiopian Airlines in September  2009 from CIT Aerospace.
Ethiopian airlines has regular flights to Lebanon, catering  for business clients and the hundreds of Ethiopians who work  there as domestic helpers. Lebanese aviation sources said some  of the passengers had been en route to Angola and other African  countries.
Last Friday the airline announced an order for 10 of  Boeing’s Next-Generation 737-800s for a total price of $767  million.
The last incident involving Ethiopian Airlines was in Nov.  1996 when 125 of the 175 passengers and crew died after a  hijacked Boeing 767 crashed off the Comoros Islands.