Memorial service for crash victims of Ethiopian Airlines holds one year later

Relatives who lost their loved ones to the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max aircraft crash last year are set to partake in a memorial service, a year after the accident took place.

The private ceremony will be held at the scene of the disaster.

All 157 people on board were killed when the plane came down, months after a similar tragedy in Indonesia.

On Monday, an interim report by Ethiopian investigators identified faulty sensors and inadequate training as possible causes of the disaster, BBC reports.

The tragic flight, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia, to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. On 10 March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft which operated the flight crashed near the town of Bishoftu six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people aboard. The cause of the accident is under investigation.

Flight 302 is the deadliest accident involving an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft to date, surpassing the fatal hijacking of Flight 961 resulting in a crash near Comoros in 1996.

The airline had 149 passengers from 35 different nationalities.

Notable victims on-board included the Italian archaeologist and Councillor for Cultural Heritage of Sicily, Sebastiano Tusa, and Nigerian-Canadian academic Pius Adesanmi. Slovak politician Anton Hrnko lost his wife and two children in the crash. Other notable victims included Christine Alalo, a Ugandan police commissioner and peacekeeper serving with the African Union Mission in Somalia.

The crashes have cost Seattle plane manufacturer, Boeing, billions of dollars and led to the worldwide grounding of 737 Max aircraft.