Flight ET302 took off from Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa at 08:38 local time (05:38 GMT) on 10 March for a two-hour flight to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Six minutes later, at 08:44, it crashed 30 miles southeast of the airport, near the town of Bishoftu.
The impact was so great, both engines were buried at a depth of 10m (32ft), in a crater 28m wide and 40m long.
The preliminary report into the accident, by Ethiopia’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, said the plane’s take-off appeared normal.
However, a short time later two sensors that measured the angle of the plane’s flight began to record different readings.
This triggered an automated safety system which repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down – something that was also recorded during the fatal Lion Air flight.
The Ethiopian authorities’ 2019 report suggested the pilots followed steps to disengage the system, but even after manually trying to steady the plane, the system pushed the nose down until the aircraft crashed.