ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s transport minister said Sunday that information from the flight data recorder on the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last week shows “clear similarities” with the crash of the same type of plane in Indonesia in October.

Dagmawit Moges told journalists that the condition of the “black boxes” was good and that enough data had been recovered that her ministry would release a preliminary report on what happened to Flight 302 in 30 days.

“During the investigation of the [flight data recorder] clear similarities were noted between Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610, which will be subject of further investigation,” Dagmawit said.

The disclosure came as thousands marched in the capital of Addis Ababa, accompanying 17 empty caskets at a funeral for the Ethiopian victims of Flight 302. The caskets were empty because authorities have said that recovering and identifying the remains will take months.

Initial data from the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight as well as subsequent satellite information recovered showed an erratic flight path during the six minutes that the plane was in the air before it crashed into a farmer’s field outside the capital on March 10, killing all 157 aboard.

The plane ascended and descended and then ascended again, all the while flying at speeds well in excess of normal takeoff procedure. The pilot, Yared Getachew, was considered experienced, with more than 8,000 hours of flying time.

There were enough similarities to the crash of the Lion Air jet in Indonesia in October, which also involved a Boeing 737 Max 8, that authorities around the world agreed to ground the plane.

Ethiopian investigators on Thursday traveled to France with the voice and data recorders, and they are being analyzed there by the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety.

Dagmawit said the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was involved in the analysis, as well.

A preliminary report about the causes of the Lion Air crash pointed to erroneous data from an angle-of-attack sensor causing the aircraft’s new automated stabilizer system to push the jet’s nose down. The pilots then struggled to pull the plane up, and it finally crashed into the Java Sea.

The minister’s comments Sunday suggested that a similar series of events may have caused the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

In November, Boeing issued a bulletin for how to reset the stabilizer if it started to push the plane’s nose down.

Dirt instead of remains

At the memorial service Sunday, some of the relatives marching behind the flag-draped coffins were overcome with grief and fainted.

The service came one day after officials began delivering bags of scorched earth from the crash site to family members of the victims because of the problems with identifying the remains.

Family members said they were given a 2.2-pound sack of dirt from the crash site. Many relatives already have gone to the dusty field outside Addis Ababa, where the plane went down, to pay their respects.

Mourner Elias Bilew said he had worked with one of the victims, Sintayehu Shafi, for the past eight years.

“He was such a good person,” Bilew said. “He doesn’t deserve this. He was the pillar for his whole family.”

Forensic DNA work began on identifying the remains, but it may take six months to identify the victims, because the body parts are in small pieces. However, authorities say they will issue death certificates within two weeks.

The victims of the crash came from 35 countries.

Crash similarities

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration already has said satellite-based tracking data showed that the movements of Flight 302 were similar to those of Lion Air Flight 610 before its crash, which killed 189 people.

Both planes flew with erratic altitude changes that could indicate the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Shortly after their takeoffs, both crews tried to return to the airports but crashed.

Suspicions emerged that faulty sensors and software may have contributed to the crashes.

Sensor’s role unknown

Crash investigators have raised concerns about the role of the angle-of-attack sensor — a device used on virtually every commercial flight — in the crash of Lion Air flight. There are concerns it may have sent the wrong signals to new software on the flight that automatically dips the plane’s nose to prevent a stall.

It is not clear whether the angle-of-attack sensor played a role in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said Sunday that his company is finalizing software updates and pilot-training protocols to address problems that have emerged “in response to erroneous sensor inputs.” He did not specify which sensors.

In interviews late last week, aviation experts said there was no reason for broad alarm about the sensors. But six experts said that the risks posed by a faulty angle-of-attack sensor are amplified by the increasing role of cockpit automation. It is an example of how the same technology that makes aircraft safer — automated software — can be undone by a seemingly small problem.

“The sensor going out is serious,” said Clint Balog, a test pilot and associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “But it can be made critical by software.”

Most commercial pilots today know how to respond to a malfunctioning sensor, said Shem Malmquist, a Boeing 777 captain and a visiting professor at the Florida Institute of Technology.

But potential complications arise with how software interprets what the sensor tells it.

“When you introduce computer controls, you start to get interactions that are hard to anticipate,” Malmquist said.

Angle-of-attack sensors have been flagged as having problems more than 50 times on U.S. commercial airplanes over the past five years, although no accidents have occurred over millions of miles flown, according to reports made to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Service Difficulty Reporting database. That makes it a relatively unusual problem, aviation experts said — but also one with magnified importance because of its prominent role in flight software.

“It is notable,” said David Soucie, a former FAA maintenance safety inspector.

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