The Ethiopian Airline plane that killed all passengers on board including the crew is the same type of plane as the Indonesian Lion Air jet that crashed last October, 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.
The Boeing 737-800MAX had the flight number as ET 302/10 that crashed around Bishoftu, formerly known as Debre-Zeit.
The plane’s other identification details were given as B-737-800MAX, registration ET-AVJ.
The aircraft left Bole International Airport in the Ethiopian capital at 8.38am local time and lost contact six minutes later.
The last major accident involving an Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane was a Boeing 737-800 that exploded after taking off from Lebanon in 2010, killing 83 passengers and seven crew.
The airline flies to many destinations in Africa, making it a popular carrier in a continent where many airlines fly only from their home country to destinations outside Africa.
It has a good reputation for safety, although in 2010 one of the company’s aeroplanes crashed in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after leaving Beirut.
The incident killed 90 people on board.
The airline’s highest fatalities to date came in a November 1996 crash during a hijacking on a flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi.
One of the aeroplane’s engines stopped when the fuel ran out and although pilots attempted an emergency water landing, they hit a coral reef in the Indian Ocean and 123 of the 175 people on board were killed.