A man has told how chance stopped him getting on the doomed Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed six minutes after take-off, killing everyone on board.
Ahmed Khalid was meant to be on flight ET302 but a delayed flight from his native Dubai meant he missed his connecting Nairobi-bound plane from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
He told Global News: “My flight was from Dubai to Addis Ababa and then from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, but because of the delay from Dubai I missed the first flight.
“So when I reached Addis Ababa they told me to take second flight, which I said was fine.”
Describing the subsequent scene at the airport, he continued: “Everyone was asking the cabin crews what was happening, but no one was saying anything.
“They were just going up and down, until one of the passengers saw on his mobile that the first place which had just flew, six minutes after it flew, it just crashed.”
It comes as two witnesses claimed the plane, which had 157 people on-board, was trailing smoke and making a strange sound before it came down on Sunday morning.
Malka Galato, the farmer whose land the plane crashed on, told Reuters he saw small items that looked like paper coming from the plane.
The plane was making a strange noise and made a sudden turn just before it crashed, he said.
Fellow farmer Tamirat Abera added the plane tried to climb before it made a sharp turn and came down.
