take-off. six minutes, in fact, after it took off, killing all 157 people on board. cnn s richard quest is with us now from amsterdam. richard, what specific similarities have been identified? reporter: they didn t actually reveal what those similarities are, but it s sufficient to say even the mere fact that the ethiopian transport minister said there were certain similarities between lyon air and ethiopian air, that in itself is of course a major development. experts point to the profile of the flight. there were dramatic altitude changes at a very early stage in both flights, the way in which the speed didn t pick up and suddenly the planes were going much faster. in both cases the similarities are there. and they are markedly different to that which you d expect from a normal flight. so we re going to get a preliminary report within 30
for us. and richard, you re the one who did the interview with the ceo of the airline. and the fact that he told you the pilots told air traffic control they were having flight control problems before the crash, what did that tell you? reporter: it tells me that there are too many similarities between what happened with the ethiopian plane and what s happened with lion air back in october. that plane, too, had flight control problems that eventually led the plane to crash very violently. remember, the similarities both brand-new planes of the max 8 variety. both in the early phases of flight. both extremely violent ways in which the planes crashed. and both where there were flight control issues and great altitude changes. brooke, if this wasn t so serious, it would be reaching to the absurd where we have all these other reputable regulators, the e.u., australia,
thirdly, you get the good night, malaysia 370. and that all happens at around 1:18 1:19 1:20. and at 1:21 the plane makes this u-turn. and as it makes the u-turn it flies back over malaysia and during that particular flight nobody notices. the radar doesn t notice at all. and what the intelligence assessment is saying is that all these events that move this flight and then crucially, as it goes over out of here this turn all of which is monitored by primary radar, not secondary radar, these various altitude changes are suspect. nobody really believes they actually took place. and then finally, that turn. and it s this long turn straight away down that they now say, when you look at those facts, when you compute that it
from descending it into the ground, making sure that nobody would see him. according to the report, the selected alty due decreased to 100 feet for three seconds and then increased to the maximum value of 49,000 feet. less than two minutes later, the selected altitude was 100 feet until it stabilized at 25,000 feet. the flight never left its scheduled path, so air traffic control didn t notice the altitude changes. the less the plane is equipped to stream the data and they decide to stream the data of the performance from the flight and someone is monitoring it, they wouldn t have noticed. it was clear that the pilot didn t notice. for another reason, the front lav was inoperative and he went to the back. he was gone for four minutes. it appears it was a dry run for what he would do later that morning on board the same plane during flight 9525.