Before Max Thabiso boarded Flight 302 on 10 March 2019, the Edkins family motto was simple: “Don’t give up any day.”
Just six minutes after takeoff, Flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi plummeted from the sky and hit the ground at 1,126.5 km/h. All 149 passengers and eight crew died instantly on impact. Five months before the Ethiopian Airlines crash, Lion Air Flight 610 spent 13 minutes in the air before crashing and killing 181 passengers and eight crew.
The system that primarily resulted in the fatal nosedives of both the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes is known as MCAS, or the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System. The MCAS was installed to activate in extreme circumstances to tip the nose of the plane downwards when it begins to lift too high. .