On Friday, exactly a year after an Air India flight bound for London crashed moments after takeoff, families of the 260 people who died gathered to remember them, still waiting for answers about what caused the crash, India’s deadliest aviation disaster in decades.
The grieving family of Akash Purohit including his wife, parents and sister, were among the dozens of people who attended a prayer meeting and candlelight vigil for the victims in Ahmedabad, where flight AI 171 crashed less than a minute after takeoff. They are also seeking answers; a government investigation into the crash has moved slowly, with no update since a preliminary report last July.
“What happened that day? Why does no one know even after one year?” said Nitaben Purohit, Mr. Purohit’s mother. The family had received his remains and were told, six months later, that some of Mr. Purohit’s belongings had been found, including his clothes and some ten rupee notes.
The Purohit family had gathered at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Ahmedabad, about 600 miles southwest of New Delhi, India’s capital, for a prayer meeting organized by two law firms representing some of the family members. They were also among more than 100 people who attended the vigil at the site where the plane’s body had slammed to the ground.
At a cluster of four buildings, part of the medical college that bore the brunt of the crash, people placed framed photographs of their relatives, lighting candles in their memory. Some wept and wailed, lost to grief.
Others, who had flown in for the event and were seeing the disaster site for the first time, stood in shock. Slabs of concrete, shattered glass and debris were strewn across the ground. Nineteen people, most of them medical students and doctors who had been eating lunch when the plane crashed at 1:39 p.m., had died along with the 241 passengers and crew members. Only one passenger survived.
Fourteen-year-old Akash Patni died near the tea stall that his mother, Sitaben Patni, ran outside the college. She recalled that he was bringing her lunch when both were struck. Ms. Patni, who suffered from severe burns, learned about her son’s death nearly three weeks after the crash.
On Friday, she sat in a chair with a life-size cutout of her son beside her.
“This is where I was sitting that day,” Ms. Patni said, burn marks visible on her hands. “This is where I last saw him.”
The Air India crash immediately raised questions about the condition of the plane, a Boeing 787, whether the engines malfunctioned and the actions of the pilots. Under international civil aviation rules, countries are expected to release a final report laying out the cause of an accident within a year of its occurrence, but they often miss that target because investigations can be complex.
The Indian government put out an interim statement instead, saying that it needed more time to analyze evidence and conduct examinations.
A preliminary report was released a month after the crash. One focus of investigators at the time was why the switches that control the flow of fuel to the engines had been turned off, suggesting either a malfunction or deliberate action by a pilot. India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that seconds after takeoff, those switches flipped from the “run” to the “cutoff” position, causing the plane to lose thrust almost immediately.
Investigators also released a snippet of conversation between the two pilots, in which one asked the other, “Why did you cut off?” The other responded that he had not done so. The report did not identify the voices of the pilots or release the full transcript. The aircraft was flown by Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his co-pilot, Clive Kundar. Between them, they had nearly 10,000 hours of flight experience.
Investigators said last year that the plane climbed no higher than 625 feet before plunging. Because the switches have a locking mechanism, it’s unlikely that they moved without human involvement, according to some safety experts.
Many pilots have taken issue with that notion.
Captain Charanvir Singh Randhawa, the president of the Federation of Indian Pilots, a private organization with more than 5,000 members, said it can be easy to blame pilots who aren’t there to defend themselves. “If the pilot is alive then you know people will fight,” Captain Randhawa said.
The crash was a major setback for Air India, which is undergoing a major turnaround under the Tata Group, one of India’s biggest conglomerates. Air India offered 12.5 million rupees, or about $132,000, to families of victims as compensation, and a majority of them have received the funds, according to a company statement.
“I don’t want their money,” said Chanda Atul Bhai Patel, the mother of Vibhuti Atul Bhai Patel, a 27-year-old physiotherapist among the victims. “I want my daughter.”
Ms. Patel, who had traveled to the prayer meeting from Surat, a city south of Ahmedabad, with her husband and son, broke down as she said: “I want justice. I want closure. I want to know what happened to her.”
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