France's air safety agency has began studying data from the black boxes of a Boeing 737 MAX plane that crashed in Ethiopia, as regulators worldwide grounded the plane and the US plane maker halted deliveries of its latest model.
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The Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed soon after take-off from Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing 157 people.
It was the second crash involving a 737 MAX since October, when a Lion Air flight plunged into the sea off Indonesia with 189 people on board.
Investigators will be looking for any links between the two air disasters.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all Boeing MAX jets in service because of similarities.
Boeing said it had paused deliveries of its fastest-selling 737 MAX aircraft built at its factory near Seattle, but continues to produce the single-aisle version of the jet at full speed while dealing with the worldwide fleet's grounding.
Possible links between the accidents have rocked the aviation industry, scared passengers, and left the world's biggest plane maker scrambling to prove the safety of a money-spinning model intended to be the standard for decades.
The flight data and cockpit voice recorders were handed over to France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) on Thursday. The first conclusions could take several days.
An Ethiopian team investigating the crash has arrived in Paris and the investigation process has started, Ethiopian Airlines said on Friday.
US lawmakers said on Thursday the 737 Max fleet would be grounded for weeks if not longer until a software upgrade could be tested and installed.
The captain of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 requested permission to return to Addis Ababa airport three minutes after take-off as it accelerated to abnormal speed, the New York Times reported.
All contact between air controllers and Flight 302 to Nairobi was lost five minutes after it took off, a person who reviewed air traffic communications told the newspaper.
Within a minute of the flight's departure, Captain Yared Getachew reported a "flight control" problem as the aircraft was well below the minimum safe height during a climb, the newspaper reported, citing the source.
After being cleared by the control room to turn back, Flight 302 climbed to an unusually high altitude and disappeared from radar over a restricted military zone, the source added.
Relatives of the dead stormed out of a meeting with Ethiopian Airlines on Thursday, decrying a lack of transparency, while others made the painful trip to the crash scene.
"I can't find you! Where are you?" said one Ethiopian woman, draped in traditional white mourning shawl, as she held a framed portrait of her brother in the charred and debris-strewn field.
Nations around the world, including an initially reluctant United States, have suspended the 371 MAX models in operation, though airlines are largely coping by switching flights to other planes in their fleets.
The FAA cited satellite data and evidence from the scene that indicated some similarities and "the possibility of a shared cause" with October's crash in Indonesia.
Two sources familiar with the matter said crash site investigators found a piece of a stabiliser used to set the airplane's trim that was in an unusual position similar to that of the Lion Air plane at the time of its crash.
Australian Associated Press
