Crash investigators from the United States have reached Ahmedabad to help piece together how one of India’s worst plane disasters unfolded, with Indian government officials saying the cockpit voice recorder had been recovered.
The investigators, from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, are conducting “a parallel probe under international protocols since the aircraft is American-made,” the Indian government said in a statement late Sunday.
Government officials also said that both the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder had now been located. The flame-resistant “black box” devices could hold information about what happened leading up to the disaster, including the final communications between the pilots of the plane, which crashed less than a minute after takeoff.
At least 270 people, including 241 passengers on an Air India flight bound for London Gatwick Airport from the city of Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, died last week as a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane smashed into buildings including the dining hall of a medical college.
The intensity of the flames from the crash has made the identification of passengers a mammoth task. As of Monday afternoon, 99 victims had been identified by matching their DNA with samples from relatives, said Dr. Rakesh Joshi, superintendent at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where most of the bodies are being held. So far, the remains of 64 victims have been handed over to family members.
“Slowly and steadily the process is becoming faster,” Dr. Joshi said. “We’ll finish in a day or two.”
Hundreds of people were milling about the Civil Hospital on Monday, where grief mixed with frustration as relatives waited for news of their loved ones.
The body of the former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, one of the crash victims, was handed over to his family on Monday in a coffin wrapped in the Indian flag.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said last week that it would coordinate with the American transportation safety board if the Indian government asked for assistance. An Indian agency, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, opened a formal investigation on Thursday, the day of the crash.
Before the Ahmedabad disaster, there had been no fatalities tied to the Dreamliner model, although the plane has experienced problems that caused passenger injuries. Air India, the country’s flagship carrier, also has a mixed safety record that it has been working to improve after a number of dangerous episodes nearly 15 years ago.
On Monday, the pilot of an Air India flight from Hong Kong to New Delhi turned back in midair and landed safely, Hong Kong airport officials said. Technical issues were behind the pilot’s decision, according to Indian news reports, which said the plane was also a Dreamliner.
Another Dreamliner, operated by British Airways and flying from Heathrow to Chennai, India, returned to the London airport on Sunday after reporting technical issues.
“This was not an emergency landing, and it is not unusual for an aircraft to return to its origin if there are reports of any technical issues,” British Airways said in a statement.
Glitches affecting planes happen often, for a variety of reasons and usually without major incident.
Anupreeta Das covers India and South Asia for The Times. She is based in New Delhi.
Pragati K.B. is a reporter for The Times based in New Delhi, covering news from across India.
The post U.S. Investigators Arrive at Scene of India’s Plane Disaster appeared first on New York Times.
