Grieving relatives collected the victims’ remains from a crashed Indian plane and investigators sifted through the rubble yesterday for the cockpit voice and the flight data recorder after India’s worst air disaster in more than a decade killed 158 people.
Eight people survived Saturday’s crash of an Air India Boeing 737-800 that overshot a hilltop runway in southern India and plunged over a cliff, officials said. At least some of the survivors managed to jump from the wreckage just before it burst into flames.
Recovery of the black boxes is crucial for determining what went wrong with the aircraft as it came in for a landing after a flight from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Investigators used cutters to search for the black boxes in the twisted wreckage of the aircraft, which was scattered along the hillside of thick grass and trees just outside Mangalore’s Bajpe airport.
A four-member US forensic team also arrived in India to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokeswoman.
Air India, the country’s national carrier, runs inexpensive flights under the Air India Express banner to Dubai and other Middle Eastern destinations where millions of Indians are employed.
May to June is the summer holiday season for the Indian expatriates to attend weddings and visit their families back home.
Dozens of crestfallen relatives arrived yesterday on a special Air India flight from Dubai and the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala to take back home the bodies of their loved ones.
Singh said that 87 of the 158 bodies have been identified and handed over to the relatives for funeral.
One of the victims was Mahendra Kulkarni, a telecommunications company director in the Emirates, who was flying back to India with his ailing mother-in-law after she had slipped into coma, cousin Nandit Banawalikar said.
Mohammed Siddiqui, 27, boarded the doomed flight in Dubai within hours of a telephone call from his family in Kerala informing him of his father’s sudden death.
He was rushing to attend the funeral on Saturday. Now his family was mourning his death as well, said Abdur Rehman, a friend who was taking his body home.
Another victim, Abdul Aziz, in his late 30s, was returning home after he lost his job in a Dubai-based catering company, relative Abdul Majid said.
Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan said that all eight survivors were still hospitalized yesterday.
After the first few minutes of the crash, no more survivors were found. Instead, scores of burned bodies were pulled from the blackened tangle of aircraft cables, twisted metal, charred trees and mud at the crash site. Many of the dead were strapped into their seats, their bodies burned beyond recognition.
Ummer Farook Mohammed, a survivor burned on his face and hands, said it felt like a tire burst after the plane landed.
“There was a loud bang, and the plane caught fire,” he said.
“The plane shook with vibrations and split into two,” G.K. Pradeep, another survivor, told CNN-IBN television.
He jumped out of the aircraft with four others into a pit, he said. Moments later, a large explosion set off a blaze that consumed the wreckage, he said.
It was not clear if all the survivors escaped in the same way.
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