Stall-prevention system got activated on its own, says Boeing crash probe

Parallels with the loss of an identical Lion Air plane led to a global grounding of the Max model and have given the probe added urgency

The stall-prevention system on a Boeing 737 Max jet automatically switched on before the plane crashed in Ethiopia this month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing initial findings from the plane’s flight data.

The conclusion was relayed at a briefing at the US Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday and is the strongest indication yet that the same system malfunctioned in both the Ethiopian Airlines flight and the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia in October, the newspaper said.

A preliminary report from Ethiopian authorities is expected within days, though the preliminary conclusions — based on analysis of the aircraft’s black boxes — could