ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines jet wrestled with controls to stay aloft but plunged to the ground after restoring current to a computer system that was ordering the nose down because of faulty sensor data, a preliminary report showed on Thursday.

The Boeing 737 MAX hit an airspeed as high as 500 knots (575 miles per hour), well above its operational limits, before cockpit data recordings stopped as the plane crashed on March 10 killing all 157 passengers and crew.

“Most of the wreckage was found buried in the ground,” said the report by Ethiopia’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.

The doomed flight crashed six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in clear conditions.

Boeing’s top-selling aircraft has been grounded worldwide since the March 10 disaster, which came just five months after a Lion Air 737 MAX crash in Indonesia that killed 189. An initial report into that accident also raised questions about the jet’s software, as well as training and maintenance.

Ethiopia urged Boeing to review its flight control technology and said pilots of the state carrier had carried out proper procedures in the first public findings on the crash.

“The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft,” Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told a news conference, presenting the outlines of a preliminary report.

Boeing Co, whose shares rose 2.4 percent on Thursday but were still below their level before the crash, said its software fix for its anti-stall system would give pilots the authority to always override the system if activated by faulty sensor data.

Reuters

Photo Rob Vogelaar