The number of deaths following the crash of the Air India Boeing 787 airplane taking off from the city of Ahmedabad bound for London has increased to 279.
The previous balance accounted for 265 dead, including passengers, crew members, and victims who died on the ground when the plane crashed.
A total of 279 bodies or body parts were transferred to the city hospital from the disaster, as indicated by the source who requested anonymity to AFP. Statements to other agencies are in line with those figures. Although an official statement with the final numbers has not been issued yet, police sources, also under condition of anonymity, told Efe that the final death toll could be “between 274 and 279 victims.”
There will be no final assessment until all DNA tests are completed.
Air India Flight 171 crashed on Thursday, less than a minute after taking off at 13:39 (10:09 CET) bound for London’s Gatwick Airport, according to Indian civil aviation. The aircraft issued a distress call almost immediately after takeoff before crashing in a residential area of Ahmedabad near the airport. According to Indian civil aviation, the Boeing 787 was carrying 230 passengers –169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian– and 12 crew members. One passenger miraculously survived the accident.
The Indian Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah, stated that the final toll of the disaster, one of the worst in the world since the year 2000, would be published after all DNA identifications of the victims have been completed. The first bodies will begin to be handed over to their families starting tonight, as these tests are concluded.
On Friday, the investigators recovered one of the plane’s black boxes, which records the flight data, and on Saturday the search continued to find the second black box, which records the conversations in the cockpit. Its analysis will be crucial to determine whether the failure was technical or human and to reconstruct the last 30 seconds of the flight. More than 100 workers and 40 engineers continue their efforts to remove the wreckage of the aircraft from the area.