"Clear similarities" between Ethiopian Air, Lion Air crashes: France's BEA

France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), which is investigating the recent crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane, announced on Monday that it had found similarities between the doomed jet and Indonesia's Lion Air flight of the same model that crashed into the sea in October last year.

A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet flies over Mesa, Ariz., en route to Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport on March 13, 2019. [Photo: AP/Elaine Thompson]

"During the verification process of the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) data, clear similarities were noted by the investigation team between Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610, which will be the subject of further study during the investigation," the BEA said in a statement.

The French bureau said the data which it had successfully downloaded from the Ethiopian aircraft's black boxes were transferred to the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau.

The BEA will release a preliminary report within 30 days, French investigators said.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 people on board.

The crash was the second such accident in five months which involved the Boeing 737 MAX model. In October 2018, a Lion Air flight of the same model crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.

Pending the final results of the probe into the Ethiopian crash, France's Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) has banned Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from the country's airspace "as a precautionary measure."