On January 25, 2010, at 12:14 a.m., shortly after midnight, Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 operating from Beirut International Airport to Addis Ababa disappeared shortly after takeoff, with 90 on board people, 82 passengers and 8 crew members.
Among the passengers, 51 Lebanese nationals were on board, 31 Ethiopians, and a Frenchwoman, Marla Sanchez Pietton, the Cuban-born wife of the French Ambassador to Lebanon, Denis Pietton . She was then going to South Africa for family reasons.
The plane, a Boeing 737-8AS registered ET-ANB built in 2002 for RyanAir and sold to Ethiopian Airlines in 2009, barely a year before the accident, took off in difficult conditions. Indeed, a storm was sweeping Lebanon. According to indications from Beirut International Airport services, it climbed to an altitude of 2,700 meters before turning sharply to the left and disappearing.
And the craziest rumors are heard in Lebanon
For his part, the then Minister of Health Mohammad Jawad Khalifé believed that the aircraft had exploded shortly after taking off.
From then on, the craziest rumors circulated in Lebanon. Witnesses said they saw a ball on fire in the sky near Naameh, the supposed place of the crash, suggesting perhaps an attack or the firing of a missile.
Some rumors indeed indicated that Hezbollah officials were present on board the aircraft. These people then accused Israel of being the cause of this accident. This presence will then be denied, as will the hypothesis of a terrorist act.
Shortly after the incident, the then President of the Republic, General Michel Sleiman and the Minister of Defence, Elias Murr , will consider that « bad weather is clearly the cause of the crash ».
Then it will be the turn of the investigators who will indicate that no trace of explosive substance was found on the debris.
The craziest rumors also when searching for the wreckage.
Immediately alerted, the Lebanese Army and the maritime component of UNIFIL will try to find survivors. A private American company with its vessel Ocean Alert will also quickly go to the scene.
The USA will hijack one of its destroyers as well as a maritime patrol aircraft, as will France and Great Britain which will take part in the research.
A new rumor will then be born in Lebanon, the American ships not looking in the right place despite all the technologies at their disposal – they claimed on their part that the depth of the crash site reached 1,300 meters -. Ocean Alert, which was on the scene just an hour after the incident, took advantage – according to these same rumors – of the opportunity of this crash to try to find another wreckage of plane containing a treasure.
Indeed, since 1957, 400 kilos of gold have never been found and rest off the Lebanese coast following the crash of an Air Liban Curtiss C-46, carrying 27 passengers and 15 cases of gold bars. towards Kuwait. This gold has not been officially found so far.
Finally, however, the wreck was only found on February 6, 2010, barely 100 meters deep and 1.6 kilometers from the coast, by divers from the Lebanese Army in cooperation with divers from the French Royal. On February 7, a first black box will be fished out, again by divers from the Lebanese Army.
A human error at the origin of the disaster
From the first hours following the accident, the Lebanese authorities indicated that the aircraft had not followed the instructions of the airport control tower, heading towards the heart of the storm instead of deviate from it.
The investigation will be entrusted to the Lebanese Civil Aviation Authority, in cooperation with the American National Transportation Safety Board, the manufacturer Boeing and the French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis due to the presence of the wife of the Ambassador of France.
Among the hypotheses then officially considered, bad weather, a technical incident such as a fire in a reactor or even human error
Finally, the experts concluded to a human-caused incident: the fatigue of the pilot indicating that, following the study of the black boxes, the crew would have made bad decisions which resulted in the loss of control of the aircraft. Worse still, the pilot and the co-pilot would not have helped each other in the shift phase and would not have controlled the actions of their counterparts.
Ethiopian Airlines, for its part, will remain convinced by the hypothesis of a terrorist act having led to the destruction of the aircraft, citing in particular the testimony of people evoking « a ball of fire in the sky ». The company indicates that the investigation was indeed not conclusive enough in the study of the origin of the passengers and the examination of their luggage.
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