Ethiopian Airlines still believes in Boeing despite MAX 737 crash

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CEO of Ethiopian Airlines Tewolde Gebremariam makes a speech during an event organized by Ethiopian Airlines to mark the International Women’s Day at Skylight Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on March 8, 2019.

The chief executive of Ethiopian airlines has said his company “believes in Boeing,” despite a tragic crash just over two weeks ago.

A Boeing 737 Max 8 plane killed all 157 people on board on March 10 just minutes into its flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi.

Questions over the Boeing plane have arisen amid similarities with the crash of a Lion Air 737 Max plane in Indonesia last October that killed 189 people.

“Let me be clear: Ethiopian Airlines believes in Boeing. They have been a partner of ours for many years,” Tewolde Gebremariam wrote in a statement Monday.

The executive added that he did not want to yet speculate on the cause of the Ethiopian crash but said the investigation was well underway and he expected to discover the truth.

Gebremariam also defended his airline’s training procedure, noting that Ethiopian pilots who flew the 737 Max 8 were fully trained on a service bulletin issued by Boeing and the Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued by the USA Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).