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On Mar 18th 2019 The Aviation Herald learned that flight ET-302 was cleared to follow the SHALA2A standard departure route after departure from runway 07R and was cleared to climb to FL360. According to ground observers the departure was uneventful, the aircraft was handed from tower to departure (=approach) control where the aircraft was cleared to track directly to waypoint RUDOL when able. The crew however requested to maintain runway heading and climb to 14,000 feet advising of a flight control problem, which was approved by departure control. Some moments later the crew requested to return to Addis Ababa (in a routine like voice), departure cleared the flight to turn right heading 260, the crew replied "stand by, stand by". The aircraft continued on runway heading, the climb appeared to be very fast initially. Departure advised the crew they were flying into a restricted zone HA (R)-1, the call was without reply. The "standby" reply by the crew proved to be the last transmission from the aircraft. Radar contact was lost from both primary and secondary radar (the secondary radar was operating in degraded mode). An arriving 787 flight was asked by approach control to overfly the area at 17,000 ft where the radar had lost contact with the aircraft, the crew of that flight however did not see anything while searching for 15 minutes. A smaller training aircraft was dispatched and found the wreckage. The source stressed, that there had been no PAN PAN or MAYDAY call, there was also no change in transponder code away from the assigned code 2000, there had been no indication of unreliable airspeed by the flight crew, there had been no distress in the voices or abnormal background noises during transmissions from the aircraft that would have alerted air traffic control to assume a serious problem on board of the aircraft. Maximum altitudes and speeds have not been reported (editorial remark: a media report had claimed the contact with the aircraft was lost at 10,800 feet MSL).