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Observer
3 days ago
- Politics
- Observer
2 UK families received ‘wrong remains' of Air India crash victims
LONDON — The families of two British citizens who died in a plane crash in India last month were sent the remains of other people, according to a lawyer representing the families. In one case, DNA samples taken from a casket found 'commingling' of genetic material from more than one victim of the crash of Air India Flight 171 in Ahmedabad, India, said the lawyer, James Healy-Pratt. In the other case, a DNA sample taken from the casket did not match that of the victim, he said. Both families who were sent the 'wrong remains' had to delay funeral plans because of the errors, said Healy-Pratt, who is representing more than 20 British families who lost loved ones in the June 12 crash that killed 260 people. 'This has added an indescribable psychological distress to families who are already going through the trauma of losing a loved one,' he said. Healy-Pratt did not identify the families who had received the mismatched remains. News of the errors, which were earlier reported by Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India began a two-day state visit to London on Wednesday. Modi was expected to meet with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain to sign a trade agreement. In response to the report, a spokesperson for India's ministry of external affairs, Randhir Jaiswal, said in a statement Wednesday that the Indian authorities had adhered to 'established protocols and technical requirements' when identifying the victims, and that the Indian government was working with British authorities to address the matter. 'All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased,' Jaiswal said. The two British citizens were among 53 Britons who died when the Air India plane crashed into a medical college seconds after takeoff in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The investigation of the crash is ongoing, but a preliminary report by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that the Boeing 787-8 jet's fuel switches had changed position. The errors with the remains were discovered by the coroner for Inner West London who conducted DNA testing after the remains were repatriated to verify that they matched that of family members, Healy-Pratt said. The coroner, Dr. Fiona Wilcox, did not return a request for comment. The remains of 12 British victims have been repatriated so far, Healy-Pratt said, adding that the remains of the other 10 victims had been accurately identified. While Britain sent forensic specialists to advise British families in India after the crash, the process of DNA identification and the placement of remains in the caskets was handled by the Indian authorities, a spokesperson for Britain's National Police Chiefs' Council said in an email. In the days after the crash, family members of the British victims traveled to India to provide DNA samples, and had been assured by the Indian authorities that the remains would be properly handled, Healy-Pratt said. 'It's appalling that the families have to go through this,' he said. 'You lose a loved one on the 12th of June, and within a matter of weeks you virtually lost them again.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Everything we know about the Air India crash points to an uncomfortable truth
With 260 casualties and only one surviving passenger, the Air India 171 crash is one of the deadliest aviation incidents in recent history — and so far it's proving to be one of the most frustratingly opaque. Video of the June 12 incident had previously captured the Boeing 787 taking off successfully from Ahmedabad bound for London, only to rapidly descend, crash into a medical college complex, and explode into flames. The crash killed all but one of the plane's 242 occupants. It also damaged five buildings, killed 19 people on the ground, and injured over 60 more. The weeks that followed saw rampant speculation, AI-generated hoaxes, and conspiracy theories. Finally, on July 11 India's air safety organization, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the cause of the disaster. The 15-page report pinpointed a dark and disturbing factor as the reason for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, someone or something cut the flow of fuel to both engines, almost simultaneously. This caused a brief but fatal dual engine shutdown that proved impossible for the plane to recover from. The implications of that double shutdown are quite bleak — but there's still a lot we don't know. What caused the crash? In the weeks following the tragedy, public speculation about the potential cause ranged from a bird strike to an electrical problem; some suggested fuel contamination, others a malfunction with the wing flaps. Many focused on what seemed to have been an extreme occurrence suggested by the visibility of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), which deploys when there are engine problems: a total engine failure. Over on YouTube, many analyzed the crash, including some pilots. Among them was Trevor Smith, call sign 'Hoover,' a former military pilot who now flies for a commercial airline. On the side, he runs the YouTube crash analysis channel Pilot Debrief. Following the Air India crash, he emphasized what seemed to be the dual loss of thrust to both engines, and speculated that perhaps one engine had lost thrust for an unknown reason and that then one of the pilots had accidentally turned off the fuel control switch to the other engine, causing both to lose thrust. Smith was hypothesizing a scenario in which at least one engine had been lost due to a mechanical failure, and an overwhelmed pilot mistakenly deactivated the other engine. The preliminary report, however, was more grim. It rejected all of those possibilities and instead pointed firmly toward a simple but unthinkable event: Both engines were shut down, first one and then the other, by way of the fuel control cutoff switch. In most Boeing airplanes, the flow of fuel to the engines gets activated via two fuel control switches. In the Boeing 787, the jet fuel control switches sit in the main console of the aircraft just below the throttles (which are used to control thrust power). The fuel switches are not easy to engage by accident; they have a built-in spring-loaded locking mechanism that requires anyone using them to first pull up on the knobs, turn them slightly, and then maneuver them up or down into the position you want — a bit like a safety-proof lid on a pill bottle. Additionally, two raised metal guards on either side of the two switches protect against accidental bumping or jostling. There were no historical issues with the switches on this particular 787, and that section of the console had been refurbished as recently as 2023. Additionally, following the crash, other Air India Boeings were inspected, and no fuel switch issues were found with any of them. In a second inspection, Air India reportedly found no issues with the locking mechanisms on the switches either. This crucial context underscores both the reliability of the switches — they were functioning normally with no problems — and the guardrails that were in place to protect against any associated mishaps. With the metal guards and the locking mechanisms, it would be all but impossible for an accident to knock both switches into the cutoff position, especially at the same time. And yet what we know from the preliminary report is that the fuel cutoff switches were somehow switched from 'run' to 'cutoff' — from 'on' to 'off,' effectively. They were moved immediately after the airplane lifted off the ground and reached its maximum takeoff speed of 180 knots, or about 207 miles per hour. In a follow-up analysis video, Smith mapped out the timeline provided in the report, emphasizing that the two switches were turned off in quick succession, just a second apart — a short gap that makes sense, he noted, if someone were to move their hand from one switch to another. Without a fuel supply, the engines immediately lost power. The RAT began supplying hydraulic power to the plane a few seconds after the fuel was cut off. A few seconds after this, one or both pilots realized what had happened. They placed the switches back into the correct position about nine seconds after they were moved. The engines began to restart, but by the time they had recovered, it was already too late. Initial media reports claimed that whichever pilot made the mayday call to air traffic control had stated, 'Thrust not achieved,' as the explanation for the call shortly before losing contact. However, the investigative report didn't include this statement, and recordings from the cockpit have not been made public. What we do know is that according to the preliminary report, 'one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off [the fuel]. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.' So was the cutoff done intentionally? The preliminary report has drawn criticism for its vagueness, and for the lack of a direct transcript of the aforementioned moment from the cockpit recorder. The AAIB has also drawn fire for its decision not to issue any safety guidelines as a result of the early stages of its investigation. However, the report was clear that the investigation is ongoing, and multiple pilots associations have cautioned against speculating before all the facts are known. Still, through its inclusion of the cockpit exchange, the preliminary report indicates that one pilot realized the switches had been manually moved and questioned the other pilot about it before moving the switches back into the 'run' position. Given the virtual impossibility of an accidental dual cutoff, and the extreme unlikelihood of a dual engine shutdown being caused by any other issue, the pilot's implied assumption in the moment that his colleague had manually moved the switches himself seems reasonable. Following the report's release, the Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation was intensifying its focus on the captain, 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal. As the pilot monitoring, Sabharwal would likely have had his hands free during the takeoff, while the first officer, Clive Kunder, 32, would have been busy actually flying the plane. According to the Journal, the exchange referenced in the preliminary report involved Kunder querying Sabharwal about why the captain had moved the switches. In the following moments, Kunder 'expressed surprise and then panicked' while Sabharwal 'seemed to remain calm.' Of course, without video of the moment, and without knowing more about the closely held details of the investigation thus far, it's difficult to know what the situation in the cockpit truly was. It's possible that Kunder's panic and Sabharwal's calm reflected nothing more than their respective level of career experience. As Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal recently explored, the power imbalance in a cockpit between a senior and a younger or less experienced pilot can have a huge impact on the outcome of a plane mishap. Yet in this case, it seems likely that even in a balanced co-piloting dynamic, nothing could have helped an unwary pilot predict, prevent, or recover from the engine failure. What do we know about the pilots and the airline? Sabharwal was a true veteran pilot, with over 15,000 career flight hours, nearly half of them piloting the 787. As a younger pilot, Kunder had just 3,400 hours of flight time, but over 1,100 of them were on the 787. It's been widely reported that Sabharwal was planning to retire soon to care for his ailing father, who himself was a career aviation ministry official. In reporting after the crash, he has been universally described by friends and colleagues as extremely kind, gentle, reserved, and soft-spoken. Kunder came from a family of pilots, went to flight school in Florida, and reportedly chose piloting over a career in esports because he loved to fly. Following the crash, the Telegraph quoted a source claiming that Sabharwal had struggled with depression and had taken mental health leave from the company. However, Air India's parent company, the Tata Group, contradicted this, with a spokesperson clarifying to the Telegraph that Sabharwal's last medical leave was a bereavement leave in 2022, and emphasizing that 'the preliminary report did not find anything noteworthy' in his recent medical history. If pilots don't get therapy, they could endanger themselves and others while in the air. But if they do get therapy, the airline could ground them. However, it could be very easy for mental health issues in pilots to go undetected and unreported. That's because the strict scrutiny and restrictions placed upon commercial pilots in the wake of the 2015 Germanwings tragedy — in which a pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing everyone on board — creates a dangerous catch-22 for pilots: If they don't get thorough and regular mental health treatment, they could be endangering themselves and others when they're in the air. But if they do get mental health treatment, the airline could ground them, perhaps permanently. For pilots who love flying, it's a major risk assessment: Around 1,100 people have been killed because of plane crashes intentionally caused by pilots since 1982. The tragedy comes at a pivotal moment for both Air India and Boeing, which have each been attempting to rebound from criticism. Air India is one of the oldest and formerly one of the most influential airlines in the world, known for the opulence and exceptional artistic style it cultivated throughout the 20th century. After the company was nationalized in the 1950s, however, its once-sterling reputation significantly backslid, until it was finally re-privatized in 2022 and handed off to the Tata Group. The company's attempts to revitalize the airline have included investing billions in readying the company for an expanded fleet and a reentry into the global market — an expansion that could be jeopardized because of the high-profile nature of the June crash. India's civil aviation minister recently announced that the company has additionally received nine safety notices in the last six months. Meanwhile Boeing continues to face criticism in the face of ongoing safety and maintenance concerns, and recently agreed to pay over $1 billion to avoid criminal prosecution over two plane crashes linked to faulty flight control systems that resulted in the deaths of 346 people. While there's no indication yet that anything about the Air India crash was due to a defect in the plane, the optics won't help the beleaguered airline. Perhaps because the stakes are so high, multiple pilot organizations in India as well as a bevy of media commentators have resisted the preliminary report's implication that one of the pilots caused the crash. The Airline Pilots Association of India as well as the Indian Commercial Pilots Association both released statements criticizing the preliminary report and objecting to any presumption of guilt. Others have suggested an undetected issue with the plane might be at fault, or that the AAIB, which issued the preliminary report, might have something to hide. The full investigation into the crash is likely to take at least a year to complete, but given the vagaries of the information obtained from the cockpit, it's uncertain whether we will ever know more than we currently do. Official aviation organizations have cautioned against a rush to judgment until the investigation is completed. Solve the daily Crossword
NDTV
6 days ago
- General
- NDTV
Air India Crash: We're All Terrified Of Flying Now, Thanks To Conspiracy Theories
The investigation into the tragic crash of Air India flight AI 171 last month has become a subject of intense speculation, memes and long posts on social media. It has also quickly eroded public trust in the investigator as well as the process of investigation. This is a sad state of affairs and also a bit scary, since erosion of trust has triggered apprehensions among the travelling public about air travel. I know of many erstwhile frequent fliers, who thought nothing before taking a flight for work or leisure, now hesitating before making the next flight booking. Some have been barred from flying by families, others remain confused over which aircraft type to fly and whether to risk a long-haul flight, weighing the option of postponing the flight altogether. Took a flight today and the panic post Air India is real - My neighbour was like what's the smoke when they initially spray the disinfectant (I think) - People were extremely attentive to the instructions sitting at the exit door - The air hostess had to literally explain why… — Kirtan A Shah, CFP® (@KirtanShahCFP) June 20, 2025 Speculation Abounds A million theories of what went wrong had already been circulated when the buzz reached a crescendo last week, after the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released a preliminary report. In a poorly worded and somewhat verbose report, the AAIB indicated that the cockpit crew could be responsible for the tragic accident, while seemingly absolving the aircraft manufacturer and other stakeholders. Two specific words or phrases in the report are telling. One, the use of the word "transitioned" in reference to fuel cutoff switches. Second, the report has quoted a part of the conversation between the two pilots, in which one is heard asking the other whether he "cut off". The report says the aircraft "achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec". What does "transitioned" mean? Were they moved, or did the switches malfunction? Unless the AAIB was prepared to go further and clarify this, either way, what was the crying need to even mention the 'transitioning' of fuel switches in a preliminary report? The Cost Of Dilly-Dallying As per ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) guidelines, a preliminary report of any accident should ideally be released within 30 days, and the investigator is expected to share "critical initial facts" to enable immediate safety actions globally. The 30-day deadline is meant to compel investigators to prioritise the collection and reporting of readily available, verified factual and circumstantial information, rather than waiting for exhaustive analysis. Obviously, then, the deadline is not meant to encourage speculation, which the AAIB seems to have encouraged, knowingly or unknowingly, by using vague terms like fuel switch transition. Besides, experts have pointed out that while the ICAO norms encourage a preliminary report within 30 days, the AAIB charter has no such requirement, and in at least one previous air crash, the AAIB did not release any preliminary report at all. So, the agency actually had the option of not going through the paces and releasing anything at all. That it chose to do so on the 30th day, past midnight, points to myriad pressures on the investigating team. The Western media thereafter made matters worse by speculating further on pilot suicide theories, quoting unnamed sources. Then, the second word or phrase which stands out in the preliminary report is the mention of a part of the conversation in the cockpit. The AAIB has chosen to reveal that one pilot asked the other about why he "cut off," and the latter replied he did not. Without spelling out which pilot posed the question and which one answered, a Pandora's box has been opened. Not only does providing just a sentence of the conversation in the cockpit fail to give the full picture of what transpired, but there is no clarity on what the pilots were actually talking about. Questions With No Answers Was this conversation about fuel cutoff or something else? If it was about fuel cutoff, which pilot posed the question? AAIB has itself said that it recovered two hours of audio from the flight data recorders. The words "cut off" could have referred to anything - engine, instruments, etc, not necessarily fuel switches. What the preliminary report has also done is this: it has provided a virtual clean chit to Boeing & Co. The report says that at this stage of the investigation, "there are no recommended actions to B787-8 and/or GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers". No one wants to fly Air India anymore. For years, people tolerated bad service, delays, rats and broken TV systems etc, but now it's about existential threat to life. Brand is badly damaged. Tata took it easy and focused on bells & whistles changes instead of improving customer… — Rajesh Sawhney 🇮🇳 (@rajeshsawhney) June 15, 2025 Again, a mere preliminary report need not have been in such undue haste to absolve either Boeing or any other stakeholder of negligence or faults. The report should have stuck to facts. It should have given out the sequence of events; details of the number of crew involved and their experience (without identifying them); number of casualties and number of injured; and the fact that both aircraft engines flamed out. Nothing else was needed in the preliminary report. Flaws are emerging even in the constitution of the probe team. Until recently, no senior pilot had been included in the team, since only Air India has a fleet of Dreamliners, and the AAIB probably wanted to avoid allegations of any bias. Then, despite more than a month having elapsed, the AAIB has not found the time to launch an appeal for the public to depose with any evidence about the crash. The Buzz In Parliament As the buzz about the crash and the AAIB's insinuations gets louder, Union Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu has had to assert in Parliament that the AAIB is unbiased and has been conducting a probe based on rules and regulations. His comments follow an appeal by the AAIB itself, urging the media and the public to refrain from "spreading premature narratives that risk undermining the integrity of the investigative process". There are really only two options now to mend the situation: either AAIB release further details of the cockpit conversation and reasons for the crash, or it follow the dictum of 'Mum's the Word' and carry out further investigation out of public glare. Rebuilding public trust in the probe - and Indian aviation- itself is the need of the hour.
CBS News
6 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Some Air India plane crash victims' families in U.K. were sent the wrong remains, lawyer says
London — The families of some British victims of the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad have discovered that remains repatriated to the U.K. were wrongly identified as being their loved ones, a lawyer who says his firm is representing over 20 victims' families told CBS News. Of the 242 people on board the Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London's Gatwick airport that crashed on June 12 just minutes after takeoff, 52 were British citizens. The cause of the crash has not been confirmed, but a preliminary report released earlier this month by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that the cockpit cutoff switches for fuel supply to both of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner's engines were switched, one after another, within one second, leading to both engines losing thrust. James Healy-Pratt, an aviation lawyer representing a number of U.K. families, said the remains of at least 12 British victims of the crash had been repatriated to the U.K., but that two of them had been misidentified. "There was one family who believed they had accompanied their loved one back from India, having gone out there to give DNA for the identification, and then (when they returned to the U.K.) were informed that the remains in the casket were nothing to do with them," Healy-Pratt told CBS News. Healy-Pratt said the mistakes were discovered when the Inner West London coroner, Dr. Fiona Wilcox, sought to verify the victims' identities by matching their DNA to samples provided by the families. "The first two caskets that arrived into the country — Dr. Wilcox and her team, assiduous as always, decided to check the verification and identity, and they discovered that DNA had been commingled in one of the caskets, which wasn't related to the person in the casket or the other person," Healy-Pratt said. Healy-Pratt said the family of one of the victims had to cancel funeral plans after being told the remains they thought belonged to their loved one were actually those of an unknown individual. "It's a double psychological trauma. It's one thing to lose a loved one, but then you go to India, you sit in a hotel, you give your DNA, you pray to God that there'll be a DNA match. You're then told there is. You're assured everything's fine and certified. You come back, and then you're told either there's more remains in the casket than just your loved one, or there are no remains, in spite of having been certified, and we don't know who this is," Healy-Pratt told CBS News. Indian officials cited by local media soon after the crash said that, given the level of the destruction at the site and the extent to which the wreckage was burned, DNA testing would be required to confirm the final death toll from both the plane and from the buildings at the site in Ahmedabad. "We have seen the report and have been working closely with the U.K. side from the moment these concerns and issues were brought to our attention," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Shri Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement Wednesday. "In the wake of the tragic crash, the concerned authorities had carried out identification of victims as per established protocols and technical requirements. All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased. We are continuing to work with the U.K. authorities on addressing any concerns related to this issue." Healy-Pratt said the statement from the Indian Foreign Ministry statement was "simply not good enough." "It lacks specifics. It lacks any detailed explanation of the chain of custody of the remains from the time of identification to DNA matching to placing in caskets. It lacks any assurances that there may be remains, whether mislabeled, unidentified or identified, still in India," he said. "The families want to draw a line under their emotional distress that's come out from this and so that requires detailed hard work by the Indian authorities to provide assurances that there are no further remains of British nationals either unidentified, identified or mislabeled, misidentified in India. And the line will not be drawn until that cast iron assurance is provided. And at the moment, it's not forthcoming," he said. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to meet in London this week, and Healy-Pratt said he hoped this issue would make it onto their agenda. Healy-Pratt also said that, in addition to seeking the remains of their loved ones, the British families want to know the cause of the Air India crash, so their lawyers are independently investigating. The families, Healy-Pratt said, want to make sure any safety recommendations that come from formal probes are implemented internationally. "And then finally, they want financial justice," Healy-Pratt said. He said the families legal team had "already made an approach to the lawyers for Air India in London, and we're progressing claims there in the High Court. And we'll also be filing an action against Boeing in the U.S. courts to get more information about these fuel control cutoff switches, because they do have a checkered history."Arshad R. Zargar contributed to this report.
India Today
6 days ago
- India Today
Malfunction led to fuel switch shift? Final crash probe report in 6 months
The final report on the Air India crash in Ahmedabad is likely to be released within six to eight months, with the major line of inquiry being the transition of the fuel control switches, sources the preliminary report out, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) probe is now focusing on the analysis of data retrieved from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and Flight Data Recorder (FDR) - together known as the black box - and evidence from the wreckage preliminary report of the crash, which claimed 260 lives, revealed that three seconds after the AI 171 flight took off from Ahmedabad, fuel supply to both engines got cut off. The report, however, does not mention if the switches were moved by either of the pilots."Through the preliminary report, we knew the fuel switches transitioned. But what caused that transition? Was there a problem with some other components which could have led to this transition? This picture will be clear when data is analysed from different angles," a highly placed source aware of the developments of the probe told India FINAL REPORT WILL REVEALThe CVR, which captures conversations inside the cockpit, is being analysed by experts at the AAIB's Delhi laboratory. Analysis of the FDR data will give technical inputs on the aircraft, its engine and other a comprehensive inspection of the aircraft wreckage is also underway. The recovered components of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were reassembled at a facility in original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have also been roped in to assist in forensic analysis of the components. The focus is on identifying any malfunctions or technical problems with the all three data sets are fully decoded and analysed, they will be synchronised to create a comprehensive reconstruction of the timeline of the the preliminary report shed light on what happened, the detailed analysis will help determine how and why the June 12 crash happened.- EndsTune InMust Watch
