Ethiopia Airlines' doomed 737 Max jet hit excessive speed and was forced downward by a wrongly triggered automation system as pilots wrestled to regain control, a preliminary report into the crash that has shaken the aviation world showed on Thursday.

Three times Capt. Yared Getachew cried "pull up" before the Boeing jetliner plunged into a field 6 minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa last month, killing all 157 passengers and crew, said the report by Ethiopian investigators.

The disaster — and parallels with another 737 Max crash in Indonesia where 189 people died last October — has led to the grounding of Boeing's flagship model.