Investigators say that an anti-stall system is activated in an accident in Ethiopia

Investigators investigating a crash of a Boeing 737 MAX in Ethiopia, which claimed the lives of 157 people, came to the preliminary conclusion that an anti-stall system had been activated before the accident occurred. The plane hit the ground, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, quoting people knowledgeable about it.

US investigators looked at the "black box" data on Ethiopian Airlines' flight 302, four people informed of the investigation told Reuters on Thursday. A preliminary report is expected next week, officials said.

The plane crashed on March 10 shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa.

Investigators of the deadly crash of the 737 MAX in Indonesia in October also focused on the new anti-stall system, called MCAS. Boeing said on Wednesday that a planned software patch would prevent the system's repeated operation, which is at the center of safety concerns.

Boeing's best-selling 737 MAX jet, with orders worth more than $ 500 billion at list price, has been blocked worldwide by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators, although airlines are still allowed to carry them without pbadengers in order to transport planes to other airports.

The manufacturer stated that it had developed a training program that the 737 MAX pilots are required to follow before the lifting of the global ban, proposing, as it had done before two fatal accidents, that these pilots do not need time on flight simulators to operate the aircraft safely.

On Thursday, a lawsuit against Boeing was filed in a Chicago federal court by the family of Jackson Musoni, a Rwandan citizen who died in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines.

The lawsuit alleges that Boeing miscalculated the automated flight control system. Boeing said he could not comment on the trial.

The amount and quality of training provided by Boeing and the airlines to the 737 MAX pilots is one of the issues under study, as investigators around the world are trying to determine the causes of two collisions of the 737 MAX in the five months.

The US Department of Justice is investigating Boeing's development process and what it has revealed about MCAS.

The US Department of Transportation announced Monday that a new "Blue Ribbon" commission will review how the Federal Aviation Administration certifies new aircraft.

US and European regulators knew at least two years before the Indonesian crash that the 737 MAX's usual dive angle control method might not work in conditions similar to those of two recent disasters, reported Reuters Friday, citing a document.

The European Aviation and Space Agency (EASA) has certified the aircraft as safe, particularly because additional training and procedures would clearly explain to pilots the "unusual" situations in which they would need to handle a rarely used manual wheel to control, or "trim", the angle of the plane.

These situations, however, were not included in the flight manual, according to a copy of American Airlines as seen by Reuters. Boeing declined to comment on the EASA document.

(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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