Ethiopian Airlines air crash is the second involving brand new Boeing 737 in ...

The tragic deaths of 157 passengers and crew today, when an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft crashed within minutes of take-off in Addis Ababa, are raising serious questions over the safety record of both aircraft and airline.

It was on another brand new Boeing 737 Max 8, in Indonesia less than five months ago, that 189 people lost their lives in the Java Sea when Lion Air Flight 610 plummeted out of the skies minutes after taking off from Jakarta.

And the incident brings the African carrier's death toll to 482 across 22 fatal incidents since its inception in 1965 - and almost 500 more people have been injured in EA crashes and incidents, according to information from the Flight Safety Foundation.

For comparison, only one British Airways flight has only ever been involved in one fatal incident: the Zagreb runway crash of 1976 when all 176 people aboard two planes died when BA Flight 476 collided with another aircraft on takeoff due to an air traffic control error.

Initial reports today show considerable similarities between the Ethiopian and Indonesian disasters which involve the same plane.

Today's flight lost contact about six minutes after take-off, having requested and been given clearance to return to the airport in Abbis Ababa.

Last year, Lion Air 610 also went down minutes after take-off having requested permission to return to base.

Today, telemetry shows the plane's vertical airspeed fluctuated rapidly in the minutes and second before its crash, including in the final moments when it seems to have been locked in a terrifyingly accelerating nosedive,.

Investigations thus far by the Indonesian and American aviation authorities have concluded the Lion Air plane also hit the sea after a violent nosedive.