The pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed on Sunday, killing 157 people, reported a “flight control” problem within a minute of takeoff, according to air traffic communication records.

Controllers also observed that the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft was moving up and down by hundreds of feet and feared that something was wrong, a US media report said.

Three minutes into the flight, pilot Yared Getachew sent another message requesting permission to return to the airport, according to an anonymous source who spoke to The New York Times.

"Break break, request back to home," the captain reportedly told air traffic controllers in an anxious voice. "Request vector for landing."

At this point controllers realised that the aircraft was travelling at an unusually high speed.

Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Show all 15 1 /15 Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia People stand near collected debris at the crash site AFP/Getty Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia A man carries a piece of debris on his head at the crash site AFP/Getty Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Wreckage lies at the crash site of the Ethiopia Airlines Boeing 737 near Addis Ababa EPA Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Debris at the site of the crash near Addis Ababa Reuters Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia CEO of Ethiopia Airlines, Tewolde Gebremariam inspects the crash site AP Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Debris from the crashed aeroplane AP Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia UN staff observe a minutes silence for the victims of the plane crash. 19 UN workers were killed in the crash AFP/Getty Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Rescuers work at the scene of the crash near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia AP Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Rescuers work at the scene of the crash near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia AP Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 (ET-AVM), the same type of aircraft that crashed EPA Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Rescuers work at the scene of the crash near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia AP Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Members of the search and rescue team work at the scene of the crash near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Reuters Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia A boarding pass at the scene of the crash Reuters Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Rescuers remove body bags from the scene of the crash near Addis Ababa AP Plane crash kills 157 in Ethiopia Wreckage at the scene of the Ethiopia Airlines flight AP

Five minutes after the plane's departure, the controllers lost all contact with it, the Times report said.

The plane crashed near Addis Ababa just six minutes after leaving the airport, killing everyone on board.

The controllers feared there was an emergency before the first message arrived, according to the person who viewed the communications.

Investigators trying to determine the cause of the crash have recovered its black boxes, which contain more information about the flight's final moments. On Thursday the flight recorders arrived in France for analysis.

Countries around the world have grounded Boeing's 737 MAX jets while the investigation is carried out.

Boeing executives announced that they had paused delivery of the aircraft, although the company planned to continue building them while it weighed the effect of the grounding on production.

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When the US Federal Aviation Administration ordered the planes grounded on Wednesday it said regulators had new satellite evidence that showed the movements of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 were similar to those of Lion Air Flight 610.

That flight crashed into the Java Sea off Indonesia in October last year, killing 189 people.