First British victim of Ethiopian Airlines flight named as UN worker, 36, whose father warned her not to catch doomed flight as jet’s erratic last seconds are revealed after it crashed killing 157

A 36-year-old animal welfare campaigner has been named as one of the seven Britons who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash which killed 149 passengers and eight crew on Sunday morning. 

The Boeing 737 Max 8 jet crashed within minutes of its take-off from Addis Ababa, losing and gaining speed dramatically in its final seconds after setting off for Nairobi.   

British victim Joanna Toole, from Exmouth, Devon, was among at least 12 passengers who were travelling to a UN environment meeting in the Kenyan capital.

Paying tribute today, her father Adrian called her a ‘very soft and loving person’ whose work with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation was ‘not a job but a vocation’. 

Mr Toole said she had flown around the world but added: ‘Personally I never wanted her to be on a single one of those planes.’  

Within the first few minutes after take-off the plane’s vertical speed, the rate of climb or descent, varied from 2,624 feet per minute to -1216.

According to Swedish flight-tracking website flightradar24 the plane, which was new and was delivered to the airline last November, ‘had unstable vertical speed’ shortly after take off.  

Aviation experts describe this as extremely unusual because once a plane has taken off the vertical speed should rise or remain stable. 

Among the 149 passengers and eight crew members killed on flight ET302 were seven Britons and one Irishman – named tonight as Michael Ryan – as well as 18 Canadians and eight Americans. 

Another victim was named as Joseph Waithaka, a native Kenyan who lived in Hull for more than a decade and was on his way home from visiting his family in the city. 

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The graphic shows how the plane’s vertical speed fluctuated in the minute before it crashed near Addis Ababa airport 

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The wreckage of the plane – showing the colours of the Ethiopian flag on the plane’s livery – lies at the scene of the crash 

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Rescue team collect bodies in bags at the crash site of Ethiopia Airlines near Bishoftu, a town some 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa

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