Indian authorities have identified more than 200 victims of last week’s devastating Air India plane crash through DNA testing, offering some closure to grieving families amid a slow and painful identification process.
The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad on Thursday, slamming into a residential area and erupting into a fireball. All but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board were killed, along with at least 38 people on the ground.
“As of 2 p.m., 202 DNA [samples] have been matched,” Harsh Sanghavi, Home Minister of Gujarat state, said Wednesday in a post on X.
Distraught relatives have been providing DNA samples to help identify remains, many of which were badly burned or dismembered, complicating the process. Eyewitnesses described harrowing scenes at the crash site, with charred bodies and debris strewn across the neighborhood.
The cause of the crash has not yet been determined. Investigators from India, the United States, and Britain are working jointly to piece together what went wrong. Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, commonly known as black boxes, have been recovered and are being analysed at India’s recently upgraded Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau lab.
India’s civil aviation regulator has since ordered inspections of Air India’s Dreamliner fleet. Initial checks, completed earlier this week, found no major safety issues.
“The aircraft and associated maintenance systems were found to be compliant with existing safety standards,” the regulator said in a statement Tuesday night.
As investigations continue and families await the return of their loved ones’ remains, the tragedy has sparked fresh concerns over airline safety and maintenance oversight in one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets.
Written By Rodney Mbua
