Heidi Moran found out that two of her friends had been killed on Air India Flight AI171 from an Instagram message request.
Ms. Moran helps run an annual LGBTQ+ festival in Ramsgate, a seaside town on England’s southern coast. Around lunchtime on Thursday, a message to Ramsgate Pride appeared from an account she didn’t recognize, based in India, saying that the names of Jamie and Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek were on the flight manifest for the plane that had crashed that day in Ahmedabad.
“We saw that they’re supposed to be at the event on Saturday, but we’ve got the manifest and sadly they were on board. They’ve passed away,” the message read.
“I didn’t really believe it, so I messaged Jamie and tried to call him,” Ms. Moran said. “But obviously I couldn’t get through, and it was true. It was surreal.”
Jamie, 45, and Fiongal, 39, had married in 2022 and ran a wellness company together. They had been visiting India for a spiritual retreat and were returning home to help organize events on Saturday at Ramsgate Pride.
The couple are two of the 52 British victims of the aviation disaster, which claimed the lives of 241 people who were flying to London’s Gatwick Airport. Dozens more were killed when the plane hit a dining hall for medical students. As the process of recovering and identifying bodies continues, bereaved relatives are searching for answers. For many family members in Britain — more than 4,000 miles from the crash site — the imperative has been to travel as quickly as possible to India.
In Leicester, a city that is home to one of Britain’s largest Indian populations, the family of the disaster’s sole survivor, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, were hurriedly packing for a flight to Ahmedabad on Friday morning.
Krunal Keshave, 24, a cousin of Vishwash, spoke outside the family’s redbrick terraced home, expressing frustration about the lack of information from either the British or the Indian authorities. “For us, we do not know anything about what is going on about the situation,” he said, noting that they had relied on BBC News for updates. “We worry so much.”
While Vishwash’s miraculous survival drew international attention, the family was in mourning for his brother, Ajay Kumar Ramesh. “We lost one cousin and we saw one cousin survive,” Mr. Keshave said. After he spoke, family members climbed into a van for the airport, with several of them, and their neighbors, crying in grief and shock.
In the city of Gloucester, in western England, a local mosque held a prayer service on Friday afternoon for Akeel Nanabawa, his wife, Hannaa Vorajee, and their 4-year-old daughter, all of whom died in the crash. Mr. Nanabawa’s mother was flying to India on the same day, the local Muslim community group said. In a statement, the family said they were “devastated” and “still coming to terms with the enormity of what has happened.”
Mr. Nanabawa was known for his “quiet generosity,” and Ms. Vorajee for “her warmth and kindness,” the statement said, adding: “Their daughter’s bright, joyful spirit made a lasting impact on everyone who knew them. She was a ray of sunshine in her school, and they were a pillar of strength in our lives. This tragedy has shaken our entire community.”
Several families were killed in the disaster, including couples with young children, and the Joshi family, which was headed to Britain to start a new life there.
Dr. Prateek Joshi, a radiologist, had moved to Derby, England, in 2021. His wife, Komi Vyas, was also a doctor, and she stayed behind in India with their three young children: a daughter and twin sons, according to Vivekanand Sharma, a leader at Derby Hindu Temple.
Dr. Joshi, who worked at the Royal Derby Hospital and at Queen’s Hospital Burton, had found a community at the temple, Mr. Sharma told The New York Times, adding that he “always had a smiling face.”
On Thursday, the family boarded the Air India flight and snapped a selfie to mark the beginning of a new chapter together.
Dr. Joshi’s colleagues at the Royal Derby Hospital described him in a statement as an “excellent doctor” and “a warm, smiling, kind man.”
“He often entertained colleagues with stories about his passions outside of work, including his newly discovered love of fish and chips and enthusiasm for walking in the Peak District,” wrote Dr. Rajeev Singh, a consulting radiologist at the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton.
In Ramsgate, Ms. Moran said that organizers had decided to go ahead with the Pride event on Saturday, with a minute’s silence to be held in memory of Jamie and Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek. “They were so excited about it, it’s a special and needed event,” she said. “They would want us to celebrate life but it’s going to be bittersweet.”
In their final Instagram story, posted shortly before leaving India, Mr. and Mr. Greenlaw-Meek laughed and joked about returning home. Fiongal described the “magical experience” of the trip. They were going back “happily, happily, happily calm,” he said, before blowing a kiss to the camera.
Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
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