The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed after takeoff earlier this week, killing 157 people. Ethiopian authorities wanted European investigators to handle the analysis because of its complexity, according to BEA spokesman Sebastien Barthe. The BEA notably helps with investigations in countries without the resources or equipment to analyze the flight recorders, often called the black boxes. BEA investigators are also often called upon when an Airbus plane has a problem anywhere in the world, because the aviation manufacturer is based in France. The BEA also studied the flight recorders retrieved from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean two years after the 2009 crash of Rio-Paris Air France Flight 447.

Source: Ethiopian News March 14, 2019 12:45 UTC