More than 200 victims of last week’s Air India jet crash have been identified through DNA testing, a hospital official said Wednesday, inching towards ending an agonising wait for relatives. There was one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew on board the London-bound plane on Thursday when it slammed into a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing at least 38 people on the ground. Distraught relatives have been providing DNA samples to help identify their loved ones, in a painstakingly slow process. As of Wednesday, 208 victims had been identified, the civil hospital’s medical superintendent Rakesh Joshi told journalists.The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner erupted into a fireball when it crashed moments after takeoff, with witnesses reporting seeing badly burnt bodies and scattered remains.Indian authorities are yet to announce the cause of the crash and investigators from Britain and the United States have joined the probe.Investigators are aiming to retrieve vital information from both black boxes recovered from the site — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau upgraded a laboratory this year where black boxes can be analysed.Following the crash, the civil aviation regulator ordered inspections of Air India’s Dreamliners. Air India said Wednesday it would also carry out “enhanced safety checks on its Boeing 777 fleet”, in a note announcing a decision to cut its international flights on widebody planes by 15 percent until mid-July.Routes affected include those flown by the Boeing 787-8 and 777 models. The move follows 83 cancellations since the crash, due to “compounding circumstances”, according to Air India.”Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, night curfew in the airspaces of many countries in Europe and East Asia, the ongoing enhanced safety inspections, and also the necessary cautious approach being taken by the engineering staff and Air India pilots,” have led to the spate of scrapped flights, the airline said.Initial checks on Air India’s fleet “did not reveal any major safety concerns”, the civil aviation regulator said late Tuesday.”The aircraft and associated maintenance systems were found to be compliant with existing safety standards,” it said.
More than 200 victims of last week’s Air India jet crash have been identified through DNA testing, a hospital official said Wednesday, inching towards ending an agonising wait for relatives. There was one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew on board the London-bound plane on Thursday when it slammed into a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing at least 38 people on the ground. Distraught relatives have been providing DNA samples to help identify their loved ones, in a painstakingly slow process. As of Wednesday, 208 victims had been identified, the civil hospital’s medical superintendent Rakesh Joshi told journalists.The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner erupted into a fireball when it crashed moments after takeoff, with witnesses reporting seeing badly burnt bodies and scattered remains.Indian authorities are yet to announce the cause of the crash and investigators from Britain and the United States have joined the probe.Investigators are aiming to retrieve vital information from both black boxes recovered from the site — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau upgraded a laboratory this year where black boxes can be analysed.Following the crash, the civil aviation regulator ordered inspections of Air India’s Dreamliners. Air India said Wednesday it would also carry out “enhanced safety checks on its Boeing 777 fleet”, in a note announcing a decision to cut its international flights on widebody planes by 15 percent until mid-July.Routes affected include those flown by the Boeing 787-8 and 777 models. The move follows 83 cancellations since the crash, due to “compounding circumstances”, according to Air India.”Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, night curfew in the airspaces of many countries in Europe and East Asia, the ongoing enhanced safety inspections, and also the necessary cautious approach being taken by the engineering staff and Air India pilots,” have led to the spate of scrapped flights, the airline said.Initial checks on Air India’s fleet “did not reveal any major safety concerns”, the civil aviation regulator said late Tuesday.”The aircraft and associated maintenance systems were found to be compliant with existing safety standards,” it said.
