A Greek man who missed an Ethiopian Airlines flight by two minutes narrowly avoided a fatal crash that claimed 157 lives, according to a social media post detailing his brush with disaster.
Antonis Mavropoulos, president of the International Solid Waste Association, shared his account on Facebook after the Nairobi-bound Boeing 737-800 MAX crashed minutes after departing Addis Ababa on March 11, 2019. He revealed he arrived at the gate just as the plane closed its doors, missing the flight that would have made him the 150th passenger.
"I was furious because no one helped me reach the gate on time," Mavropoulos wrote in a post titled "My lucky day," which included a photo of his ticket. He was en route to Nairobi for the UN Environment Programme’s annual assembly when the incident occurred.
Airport staff detained Mavropoulos for questioning, citing his status as the sole booked passenger who did not board the doomed flight. "They wouldn’t let me leave until they verified my identity and the reason I missed the plane," he said in the post, which described his shock at surviving the tragedy.
The crash killed all 157 people on board, including passengers from over 30 countries and multiple UN workers. The aircraft, delivered by Ethiopian Airlines on November 15, 2018, was the same model involved in a October 2018 crash in Jakarta that killed 189 people.
