Beirut (dpa) – Ethiopian Airlines Tuesday rejected a Lebanese probe over the 2010 crash of its plane from Beirut, and said it likely to have been caused by sabotage or a lightning strike. The official Lebanese report blamed pilot error. “There were no errors on behalf of the experienced pilot, the aircraft disintegrated in the air due to explosion, which could have been caused by a shoot-down, sabotage or lightning strike,” Desta Zeru, vice president of flight operations for Ethiopian Airlines, said in a statement. A Lebanese official report issued earlier Tuesday said the pilot of the Ethiopian plane which went down into the sea shortly after take off from Beirut International airport made “several errors” which led the plane to crash. “What is clear is that there were errors on behalf of the pilot and co-pilot who are entirely responsible for the plane crash,” Public Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi told a press conference in Beirut. According to the report, the pilot and co-pilot had been working non-stop for several days and were exhausted when Flight ET409, a Boeing 737-800 heading for Addis Ababa, disappeared off the radar some five minutes after taking off on January 25, 2010 from Beirut during a thunderstorm, killing all 83 passengers and seven crew. Lebanese officials have previously said that data recovered from the plane's black box showed all of its instruments were functional before it plunged into the Mediterranean. Aridi said that the Lebanese report was in line with findings by French and American investigators. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/VT3lH Section: Latest News
