An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed after repeated nose-down commands from the aircraft's flight control systems, the preliminary report says.

Ethiopia's transport minister Dagmawit Moges says the preliminary data from the flight data recorder of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX shows a clear similarity with an accident involving Indonesia's Lion Air in October 2018.

Indonesian investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of the Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 that crashed in late October 2018.

The preliminary report into Lion Air flight JT610 says pilots were battling a "flight control problem" before the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in the Java Sea.