Search and recovery teams continued scouring the site of one of India’s worst aviation disasters for a third day after the Air India flight fell from the sky and killed at least 270 people in Gujarat state, officials said yesterday.
The London-bound Boeing 787 on Thursday struck a medical college hostel in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad minutes after takeoff, killing 241 people on board and at least 29 on the ground. One passenger survived.
Recovery teams working until late on Friday found at least 25 more bodies in the debris, officials said.
Photo: AFP
Dhaval Gameti, a doctor at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, said the facility had received 270 bodies.
The lone surviving passenger was still under observation for some of his wounds, Gameti said.
“He is doing very well and will be ready to be discharged any time soon,” Gameti said yesterday.
Hundreds of relatives of the crash victims have provided DNA samples at the hospital. Most bodies were charred or mutilated, making them unrecognizable.
Some relatives yesterday expressed frustration that the process was taking too long.
Authorities say it normally takes up to 72 hours to complete DNA matching, and they are expediting the process.
“Where are my children? Did you recover them?” asked Rafiq Abdullah, whose nephew, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren were on the flight. “I will have to ask questions. Government is not answering these questions.”
Another relative persistently asked hospital staff when his relative’s body would be handed over to the family for last rites.
“Give us the body,” the relative said.
Investigators on Friday recovered the plane’s digital flight data recorder, or the black box, which was recovered from a rooftop near the crash site and is expected to lead to clues about the cause of the accident.
The Indian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said it had started working with “full force” to extract the data.
The device is expected to reveal information about the engine and control settings, while the voice recorder would provide cockpit conversations, said Paul Fromme, a mechanical engineer with the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti, a former crash investigator for the US National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration, said investigators should be able to answer some important questions about what caused the crash as soon as next week as long as the flight data recorder is in good shape.
Investigators likely are looking at whether wing flaps were set correctly, the engine lost power, alarms were going off inside the cockpit and if the plane’s crew correctly logged information about the hot temperature outside and the weight of the fuel and passengers, Guzzetti said.
Mistakes in the data could result in the wing flaps being set incorrectly, he said.
Thursday’s Air India crash involved a 12-year-old Boeing 787. Boeing planes have been plagued by safety issues on other types of aircraft.
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