BEA says data shows "clear similarities" between Boeing crashes

Investigators who verified data extracted from the black box recorders of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane that crashed eight days ago killing 157 people have found "clear similarities" with October's doomed Lion Air flight of the same model, the French BEA air accident authority said on Monday. "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 data extraction was verified by the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau, the BEA and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. A source earlier told Reuters that the "angle of attack" between the oncoming air and the wing - a key flight parameter that must remain narrow enough to preserve lift and avoid an aerodynamic stall - was "very similar" in the two fatal crashes.

A computer's response to an apparently faulty angle of attack reading is at the centre of an ongoing probe into the Lion Air disaster. (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)