What happened
On March 10, 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines flight operated a scheduled international service from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport to Nairobi, Kenya. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-8(MAX) with registration ET-AVJ, departed Addis Ababa with 157 persons on board, including 149 passengers and 8 crew members.
During the initial takeoff roll, all systems appeared normal. However, shortly after liftoff, the left angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor began providing erroneous data, triggering the left stick shaker. This caused significant discrepancies between the left and right AOA readings, with the left side showing extreme values. As the flight progressed, the aircraft experienced multiple instances of automatic nose-down trim activation.
Despite the crew applying significant manual back-pressure and electric trim-up inputs to counteract the nose-down movement, the aircraft's pitch continued to decrease. The crew eventually notified air traffic control of a flight control problem and requested to return to the departure airport. During the subsequent descent, a final automatic trim activation caused the aircraft to enter a steep dive. The aircraft's descent rate accelerated to over 33,000 feet per minute before impacting terrain approximately 28 NM southeast of Addis Ababa near Ejere. The high-energy impact resulted in 157 fatalities.