Ethiopia Airlines Crash: Greek man misses Nairobi flight by 2 minutes, survives; says, ‘My lucky day’
An Ethiopian Airlines jet carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew members on board killed after the plane crashed on Sunday, minutes after takeoff. The flight lost control with the tower within six minutes after takeoff. Where punctuality is said to be the best policy and key to success, a passenger, who would have been the 150th passenger on the Nairobi-bound Ethiopian Airlines Boeing plane ditched the death after he got late by two minutes.
Antonis Mavropoulos, a Greek man, missed his flight as he arrived two minutes late for the flight and called it ‘my lucky day.’ "I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time," Antonis Mavropoulos said in a Facebook post entitled "My lucky day" in which he includes a photo of his ticket.
Mavropoulos, is a president of the International Solid Waste Association, was travelling to Nairobi to attend the annual assembly of the UN Environment Programme. According to reports, he was supposed to board the plane but he reached the departure gate just two minutes after it was closed.
He booked a later flight but was then prevented from boarding by airport staff. "They led me to the police station of the airport. The officer told me not to protest but to pray to God because I was the only passenger that didn't board the ET 302 flight that was lost," Mavropoulos said in his post in which he admits being in shock.
"They said they couldn't let me go before cross-checking my identity, the reason I hadn't boarded the plane etc," he posted.
According to the Airlines statement, the pilot of Boeing 737 that crashed had alerted controllers “he had difficulties.” The pilot wanted to turn back the jet carrying 157 people, the head of Ethiopian Airlines said.
Authorities said Canadians, Chinese, Americans, Italians, Indians, French, British, Egyptians among those killed in Ethiopian plane crash. "Four Indians among the 157 people who lost their lives after Addis Ababa-Nairobi flight crashed," said airlines.
First published: 11 March 2019, 15:22 IST
