An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger jet to Nairobi crashed early on Sunday, killing 149 passengers and eight crew, the airline said, the same model that crashed during a Lion Air flight in Indonesia in October.
Sunday's flight left Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8:38 am (0538 GMT), before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8:44 am, according to Reuters.
"The group CEO who is at the scene right now deeply regrets to confirm there are no survivors," the airline tweeted alongside a picture of Tewolde GebreMariam in a suit holding a piece of debris inside a large crater.
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Passengers from 33 countries were aboard, said Tewolde in a news conference. The dead included Kenyan, Ethiopian, American, Canadian, French, Chinese, Egyptian, Swedish, British and Dutch citizens.
At Nairobi airport, many relatives of passengers were left waiting at the gate for hours, with no information from airport authorities. Some learned of the crash from journalists.
Flight ET 302, registration number ET-AVJ, crashed near the town of Bishoftu, 62 kilometers southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, the airline said.
"The pilot mentioned that he had difficulties and that he wanted to return. He was given the clearance (to return back)," said Tewolde during his news conference.
The flight had unstable vertical speed after take off, said flight tracking website Flightradar24 on its Twitter feed.
The aircraft had shattered into many pieces and was severely burnt, a Reuters reporter at the scene of the crash said.
The airline had earlier incorrectly identified the plane's model number, but later confirmed it was a 737 MAX 8.
It's not clear what caused the crash. Boeing sent condolences to the families and said it was ready to help investigate.
"A Boeing technical team is prepared to provide technical assistance at the request and under the direction of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board," the company said in a statement.
This is the second recent crash of the relatively new 737 MAX 8, the latest version of Boeing's workhorse narrowbody jet that first entered service in 2017.
The same model crashed into the Java Sea shortly after take-off from Jakarta on Oct 29, killing all 189 people on board the Lion Air flight.
The cause of that crash is still under investigation. A preliminary report issued in November, before the cockpit voice recorder was recovered, focused on airline maintenance and training and the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor, but did not give a reason for the crash. A final report is due later this year.
The plane is the latest version of the 737, the world's best selling modern passenger aircraft and one of the industry's most reliable.
