An Ethiopian Airlines flight to Nairobi has crashed early on Sunday with 149 passengers and eight crew members on board.
"We hereby confirm that our scheduled flight ET 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi was involved in accident today," the airline said in a statement.
"It is believed that there were 149 passengers and eight crew on board the flight but we are currently confirming the details of the passenger manifest for the flight."
There were no immediate details on what caused the crash.
The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, widely considered the best-managed airline in Africa, calls itself Africa's largest carrier and has ambitions of becoming the gateway to the continent.
The airline said "search and rescue operations are in progress and we have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties."
The plane took off at 8.38am from Bole International Airport and "lost contact" six minutes later.
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said the flight had "unstable vertical speed" after takeoff.
Flight ET 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu, 62 kilometres southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, the airline said, confirming the plane was a Boeing 737-800 MAX.
The official Twitter account of the office of the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed expressed condolences to families of those lost in an Ethiopian airline's flight to Nairobi, without giving details.
"The office of the PM, on behalf of government and people of Ethiopia, would like to express it's deepest condolences to the families that have lost their loved ones on Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 on regular scheduled flight to Nairobi, Kenya this morning," the PM's office said on Twitter.
Ethiopian Airlines said it would send staff to the accident scene to "do everything possible to assist the emergency services."
It would also set up a passenger information centre and a dedicated telephone number for family and friends of people who may have been on the flight.
The Boeing 737-800MAX is the same type of plane as the Indonesian Lion Air jet that crashed last October, 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.
The last major accident involving an Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane was a Boeing 737-800 that exploded after taking off from Lebanon in 2010, killing 83 passengers and seven crew.
Sunday's crash comes as the country's reformist prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has vowed to open up the airline and other sectors to foreign investment in a major transformation of the state-centred economy.
Ethiopian Airlines has been expanding assertively, recently opening a route to Moscow and in January inaugurating a new passenger terminal in Addis Ababa to triple capacity.
Speaking at the inauguration, the prime minister challenged the airline to build a new "Airport City" terminal in Bishoftu - where Sunday's crash occurred.
