Seven Britons killed in Boeing 737 disaster
By Dominic Nicholls defence correspondent and Robert Mendick chief reporter
A GRIEVING father said last night he had “never wanted” his “soft and loving” daughter to be on a plane that crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 passengers and crew on board.
Joanna Toole was one of seven Britons who perished when a Boeing 737 Max-8 jet, which was only months old, crashed just six minutes after take-off.
The US aircraft giant launched an investigation amid growing concern over the passenger jet’s design. The same model had crashed in another air disaster less than five months ago, killing all 189 people on-board.
The cause of yesterday’s crash is still unclear but the pilot of Ethiopia Airlines flight ET302 reported difficulties shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa en route to the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Terrorism has not been ruled out. It has also emerged that the US Department of State had released a security alert on March 8, advising all US government travellers “not to arrive or depart [Addis Ababa’s] Bole International Airport on March 10”, although this advice was rescinded a day later.
Ms Toole, 36, from Exmouth in Devon, was due to attend the United
‘Personally I never wanted her to be on a single one of those planes. Up until now she had been lucky’
Nations Environment Assembly starting in Nairobi. She was, her father said, a committed environmentalist and animal lover who worked for the UN’S Food and Agriculture Organisation.
“Joanna was a very soft and loving person,” said her father Adrian Toole, speaking to Devonlive website. “She had never really wanted to do anything else but work in animal welfare since she was a child.
“Somehow that work took her into the international sphere … That involves a lot of travelling – although personally I never wanted her to be on a single one of those planes. Up until now she had been lucky.”
Ms Toole’s partner, who lived with her in Rome, had telephoned her father to inform him she was on the flight, while her employers described her as “a wonderful human being”.
The crash raises questions over the design of the Boeing aircraft and in particular its anti-stall mechanism. Within the first few minutes after takeoff the plane’s vertical speed, the rate of climb or descent, varied dramatically.
Its “unstable” vertical speed, according to data from the flight-tracking
website Flightradar24, went from 2,624 feet per minute to -1,216, suggesting the plane rose and fell rapidly in the minutes before it plunged into scrubland. Vertical speed should remain stable – or else increase – after take-off.
Photographs from the scene showed the devastation caused by the crash, with harrowing images of body parts, covered up by body bags, scattered in the wake of the crash at 8.44am.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive in November last year in relation to one of the flight systems on the Boeing 737-8 and 737-9 series of aircraft, following the crash of the Lion Air flight 610 – another Boeing 737 Max 8 – just 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta on Oct 29.
The FAA directive warned that an “angle of attack” censor, supposed to help prevent a plane from stalling, could lead to an “excessive nose-down attitude, significant altitude loss, and possible impact with the terrain”. This “unsafe condition … is likely to exist or develop” in the Boeing 737-8 and 737-9 designs, the directive concluded.
Boeing last night announced it would be sending a technical assistance team to the site of the crash.
When asked by The Daily Telegraph about the travel alert appearing to coincide with the crash, a US State Department official said it “related to concerns about traffic in the city due to expected protests. The restriction on travel to and from the airport was lifted on March 9”.
James Macharia, Kenya’s transport secretary, told reporters there were citizens of at least 35 different countries on board, including seven British passengers. It is thought to be the biggest loss of British lives in a passenger jet crash since the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.
Among the 32 Kenyans who lost their lives was Joseph Kuria Waithaka, 55, who had lived in Hull for more than a decade working for the probation service and was travelling back to the region after visiting his wife and children who still live in the UK. His daughter, Zipporah Kuria, wrote on Twitter
that her father “was the first man I ever loved, believed in my dreams more than I ever could. Rest in peace Daddy”.
A French-british polar tourism expert has been named in Norwegian media as one of those to have died in the crash. Sarah Auffret was an environmental agent for the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators.
“Words cannot describe the sorrow and despair we feel. We have lost a true friend and beloved colleague,” a statement from the Norwegian firm said.
There were also eight Americans and 18 Canadians among the dead. Theresa May said she was “deeply saddened to hear of the devastating loss of life”.
As many as 50 people were thought to be heading for the same UN conference. The UN confirmed a number of its staff had died while the World Food Programme said it was “mourning” the loss of its employees, including an Irish victim named as Michael Ryan. Among those killed were the wife and two children of the Slovakian MP Anton Hrnko, while hospitality company Tamarind Group said its chief executive, Jonathan Seex, a Kenyan national, also died.
Tewolde Medhin, the Ethiopian Airlines CEO, visited the scene of the crash, where emergency worker Lenora Ayana told The Telegraph that officials were “having a hard time locating bodies with so much debris”.
The plane had taken off at 8.38am (0638 GMT) from Bole International Airport but lost contact six minutes later near Bishoftu, a town south-east of Addis Ababa. The plane came down near the village of Tulu Fara.
A massive crater could be seen at the crash site, with belongings and aeroplane parts scattered widely. A witness told the BBC there was an intense fire. “The blast and the fire were so strong that we couldn’t get near it,” he said. “Everything is burnt down.”