Antonis Mavropoulos saved from Ethiopia crash by running two minutes late

An Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed 6 minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board, a Greek man would have been the 150th passenger, except he arrived two minutes late for the flight.

Antonis Mavropoulos. Source: Facebook

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash of the Boeing 737-8 MAX plane, which was new and had been delivered to the airline in November.

"I was mad because nobody helped me to reach the gate on time," Antonis Mavropoulos said in a Facebook post entitled "My lucky day" in which he includes a photo of his ticket.

Virgin Australia has 40 737 MAX family of aircraft on order. It was due to receive the first 737 MAX 8 in late 2019.

Meanwhile, Qantas was expected to run a competition between the 737 MAX and A320neo at some future point for the replacement of its existing 737-800 fleet.

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