Germany’s federal agency responsible for investigating air accidents has said they will not analyse the black box from the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed on Sunday, casting uncertainty over the process of finding out what may have caused the disaster.
“This is a new type of aircraft with a new black box, with new software. We can’t do it,” Germout Freitag, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) said.
The move leaves unclear the destination of the black box, which may yield vital details of what caused the Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 to plunge to the ground, killing 157 people.
A spokesman for Ethiopian Airlines had said earlier that the black boxes recovered from the crashed plane would be sent to Germany for analysis.
Ifeoma Okeke
Ifeoma Okeke
Ifeoma Okeke-Korieocha is the Aviation Correspondent at BusinessDay Media Limited, publishers of BusinessDay Newspapers.
She is also the Deputy Editor, BusinessDay Weekender Magazine, the Saturday Weekend edition of BusinessDay.
She holds a BSC in Mass Communication from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Masters degree in Marketing at the University of Lagos.
As the lead writer on the aviation desk, Ifeoma is responsible and in charge of the three weekly aviation and travel pages in BusinessDay and BDSunday. She also overseas and edits all pages of BusinessDay Saturday Weekender.
She has written various investigative, features and news stories in aviation and business related issues and has been severally nominated for award in the category of Aviation Writer of the Year by the Nigeria Media Nite-Out awards; one of the Nigeria’s most prestigious media awards ceremonies.
Ifeoma is a one-time winner of the
prestigious Nigeria Media Merit Award under the 'Aviation Writer of the Year' Category.
She is the 2025 Eloy Award winner under the Print Media Journalist category.
She has undergone several journalism trainings by various prestigious organisations.
Ifeoma is also a fellow of the Female Reporters Leadership Fellowship of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.
