Ethiopian Airlines has grounded all of its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft as “an extra safety precaution” following the crash of one of its planes in which 157 people were killed, a spokesman said Monday, as Ethiopia marked a day of mourning and the plane’s damaged “black box” of data was found.
Investigators are trying to determine the cause of a deadly crash Sunday involving a new aircraft model touted for its environmentally friendly engine that is used by both Air Canada and WestJet.
READ MORE: Mother and daughter, climate change activist identified as victims in Ethiopian Airlines crash
Eighteen Canadians were among the passengers and crew who died when an Ethiopian Airlines plane went down shortly after departing from Bole Airport in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, Kenya.
Although it isn’t yet known what caused the crash of the new plane in clear weather outside Addis Ababa on Sunday, some witnesses told Reuters the plane was making a strange rattling noise and trailed smoke and debris as it swerved above a field of panicked cows before hitting earth.
The plane’s “black box” of flight data and cockpit voice recorder had been found, Ethiopian Airlines said. An airline official, however, told The Associated Press that the box was partially damaged and “we will see what we can retrieve from it.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak to the media.
WATCH: Eighteen Canadians among 157 killed in Ethiopia plane crash.
Ethiopian Airlines decided to ground its remaining four 737 Max 8s until further notice, spokesman Asrat Begashaw said.
Some others around the world were deciding to do the same. China’s civilian aviation authority ordered all Chinese airlines to temporarily ground their Max 8s, and Caribbean carrier Cayman Airways said it was temporarily grounding the two it operates.
The aircraft was also involved in a Lion Air crash in October when a two-month-old plane plunged into the Java Sea minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, killing 189 people.
Air Canada has 24 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes in its fleet, WestJet operates 13 and Sunwing has four.
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“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the passengers and crew of Ethiopian Airline Flight 302 which was lost while enroute to Nairobi this morning,” Air Canada spokeswoman Isabelle Arthur said in a statement. “These aircraft have performed excellently from a safety, reliability and customer satisfaction perspective.”
WATCH: Plane parts were recovered on Monday at the site of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet
WestJet also expressed condolences, and said it would not speculate on the cause of the incident at this time.
Looking for remains
After sunrise, Red Cross workers slowly picked through the widely scattered debris near the blackened crash crater, looking for the remains of 157 lives. A shredded book. A battered passport. Business cards in multiple languages. Heavy machinery dug for larger pieces of the plane.
Asrat said forensic experts from Israel had arrived to help with the investigation. Ethiopian authorities lead the investigation into the crash, assisted by the U.S., Kenya and others.
“These kinds of things take time,” Kenya’s transport minister, James Macharia, told reporters Monday morning.
People from 35 countries died in the Sunday morning crash six minutes after the plane took off from Ethiopia’s capital en route to Nairobi. Ethiopian Airlines said the senior pilot issued a distress call and was told to return but all contact was lost shortly afterward. The plane plowed into the ground at Hejere near Bishoftu.
Kenya lost 32 people, more than any country. Relatives of 25 of the victims had been contacted, Macharia said, and taking care of their welfare was of utmost importance.:
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Canada, Ethiopia, the U.S., China, Italy, France, Britain, Egypt, Germany, India and Slovakia all lost four or more citizens.
Leaders of the United Nations, the U.N. refugee agency and the World Food Program announced that colleagues had been on the plane. The U.N. migration agency estimated that 19 U.N.-affiliated employees were killed.
Both Addis Ababa and Nairobi are major hubs for humanitarian workers, and some had been on their way to a large U.N. environmental conference set to begin Monday in Nairobi. The U.N. flag at the event flew at half-staff.
The crash was strikingly similar to that of a Lion Air jet of the same Boeing model in Indonesian seas last year, killing 189 people. The crash was likely to renew questions about the 737 Max 8, the newest version of Boeing’s popular single-aisle airliner, which was first introduced in 1967 and has become the world’s most common passenger jet.
Safety experts cautioned against drawing too many comparisons between the two crashes until more is known about Sunday’s disaster.
The Ethiopian plane was delivered to the airline in November. The jet’s last maintenance was on Feb. 4, and it had flown just 1,200 hours.
The crash shattered more than two years of relative calm in African skies, where travel had long been chaotic. It also was a serious blow to state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, which has expanded to become the continent’s largest and best-managed carrier and turned Addis Ababa into the gateway to Africa.
WATCH: Andrew Scheer expresses sympathies to families impacted by Ethiopian Airlines crash
— With files from Global News
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