AN ENGINEER from Catalunya and an aid worker from Galicia are among the victims of the Boeing 737-8 crash in Ethiopia this morning, along with seven British, five German, 18 Canadian, eight US and seven French nationals.
As well as the eight members of the crew, the passengers included United Nations and overseas charity workers plus tourists of 35 nationalities.
Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302, heading for Nairobi, Kenya went down minutes after take-off from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa today with 157 people on board and no survivors.
Pilar Martínez Docampo, 32, from Cangas do Morrazo (Pontevedra province, Galicia) who worked for a charity based in Ethiopia is among the deceased, and her home town has declared three days of mourning with its flags flown at half-mast and all public functions postponed.
The mayor said that ‘the death of any resident is sorely felt’, but in this case the grief is multiplied by Pilar’s beg ‘a young person with a sense of humanity and solidarity’.
Jordi Dalmau Sayol, 46, from Granollers (Barcelona province) was a chemical engineer employed by Almar Water Solutions, specialising in developing mains water infrastructure, and had been in Kenya for his job.
Four workers from the World Food Programme’s head office in Rome and two from its branch in Ethiopia were among the deceased, whilst five UN workers based at the office in Nairobi plus one member of the United Nations’ High Council for Refugees (UNHCR) and another from the International Telecomms Union are known to have been on board.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), the International Migration Organisation (OIM) in Sudan, the World Bank and a UN Somalian aid mission also announced the loss of one each of their staff, whilst mayor of Bergamo, Italy, Giorgio Gori, reported that three of its residents who were working for the locally-based Italian charity Africa Tremila and were on their way to South Sudan had been on flight ET302.
The Kenyan Football Federation chairman Nick Mwendwa said on Twitter that today was ‘a sad day for the sport’ after finding out the organisation’s former secretary-general, Hussein Swaleh, had been on the plane.
Austrian media have confirmed the death of three doctors from the country, whilst Consular sources in Russia have identified three of its residents, who were tourists, as being among the passengers.
MP for the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party, Anton Hrnko, has discovered that his wife and two children were on board.
Of the victims, 19 were staff from international organisations, mainly the UN, and some of them were on their way to Nairobi to take part in the fourth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-4), where over 5,000 representatives of 193 countries, including heads of State and ministers, were due to attend.
Two Moroccans, two Israelis, eight Chinese nationals, 32 Kenyans and one citizen each from Nepal, Yemen and Nigeria were known to be on board.
Spain’s foreign affairs minister Josep Borrell, left Addis Ababa airport just a few hours before the crash, having met with every single Spanish ambassador on the African continent and several business professionals, who had also been at the terminal.
He is in Ethiopia for a conference on competition in business organised by AmChamSpain, and said that some of the Spanish professionals involved had been due to fly on the ET302 but had changed their tickets at the last minute.
Addis Ababa airport is ‘ultra-modern’ and equipped with ‘all navigation assistance systems’, said Borrell, who admits he ‘has no idea what could have happened’.
Flight ET302 had been in the sky just six minutes when it crashed about 42 kilometres south of Addis Ababa and, although both the black boxes have been recovered from the wreckage, the causes remain unknown.
Ethiopian Airlines has revealed that the pilot reported ‘difficulties’ and requested a return to base, which was granted.
According to the Swedish airline tracker site Flightradar24, the craft was moving ‘at an unstable vertical speed’ following take-off.
Ethiopia, China and Mongolia have announced they will not use any of their Boeing 737-MAX 8 until further notice, in case the crash was the result of a technical fault.
