The black box data of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max, which crashed last week, has indicated “clear similarities” with the Lion Air crash that occurred in Indonesia last year, said Ethiopia’s Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges on Sunday (17 March), ANI has reported.

Informing that the condition of the “black boxes” (flight data recorder) was good, Moges said enough data has been recovered and that the Ethiopian transport ministry’s Accident Investigation Bureau will release a preliminary report in 30 days on the fate of the flight 302 at the time of the crash.

“During the investigation of the FDR (flight data recorder), clear similarities were noted between Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Indonesian Lion Air flight 610, which will be the subject of further investigation,” Moges was quoted by The Washington Post as saying.

Initial data from the ill-fated flight as well as subsequent satellite information recovered showed an erratic flight path during the six minutes that the plane was in the air before it crashed into a field outside Addis Ababa, the capital, on 10 March, killing all 157 aboard.

According to a preliminary report, the crash of Lion Air flight 610 in October last year was blamed on erroneous data from a sensor which was causing the plane’s new automated stabiliser system to push the aircraft’s nose down. The pilots reportedly kept trying to pull the plane up but it kept on descending and ultimately plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 passengers aboard.