An Ethiopian team investigating the crash of flight ET302, which killed all people on board, has arrived in Paris, where the aircraft’s black boxes are being examined, the airline said on Friday.
“The Ethiopian delegation led by the chief investigator of Accident Investigation Bureau has arrived in the French Safety Investigation (BEA) facilities and the investigation process has started in Paris,” Ethiopian Airlines tweeted.
France’s air safety agency on Friday began studying data from the black boxes of a Boeing 737 MAX plane that crashed in Ethiopia to determine what caused the crash after the agency received two black boxes on Thursday, as regulators over the world grounded the plane causing the U.S. planemaker to halt deliveries of its latest model.
The agency tweeted a picture of the data recorder, which appeared to show the crash-proof housing protecting the critical recording chip intact. Investigators are also analyzing the voice recorder, which should have picked up the conversations between the pilots and with air traffic controllers.
Nations around the world, including an initially reluctant United States, have suspended the Boeing 737 MAX 8 models in operation. Since the model is relatively new, only 371 such planes were flying, but another nearly 5,000 MAXs are on order, meaning the financial implications are huge.
The Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed soon after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing 157 people. The plane plunged into a field minutes after take-off. It was the second crash involving a 737 MAX since October, when a Lion Air flight plunged into the sea off Indonesia with 189 people on board.
Investigators will be looking for any links between the two air disasters.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all Boeing MAX jets in service because of similarities.
Boeing said it had paused deliveries of its fastest-selling 737 MAX aircraft built at its factory near Seattle, but continues to produce the single-aisle version of the jet at full speed while dealing with the worldwide fleet’s grounding.