The Albany Gazette - A year after deadly Air India crash, families await answers

On June 12, 2025, a Boeing 787 crashed into a medical college shortly after take-off in India's western city of Ahmedabad, killing 260 people in the deadliest air disaster for a decade.

Indian authorities are expected to issue an interim report in the coming days, a source of frustration to the victims' relatives, who had been expecting a final disclosure.

Suresh Patni, a driver, came to the site where the plane exploded in a ball of flame, engulfing his teenage son Akash at his family's tea stall.

"We are here today only to remember him on his first death anniversary," Patni told AFP.

"He was a good student and could have done really well for himself."

Patni commemorated Akash with a framed photograph and a life-size cutout, decorated with flowers and surrounded by scattered rose petals and lit lamps.

The crash killed 241 people on board the plane and 19 people on the ground.

Fragments of bags, clothes, and a melted shoe lie half-buried in the charred earth at the site, alongside dead trees with burned trunks.

"It pains us when we hear an aeroplane flying overhead," Patni said, adding that their home was near the flight path of the airport in Ahmedabad, the main city in the state of Gujarat.

"Our house is still at the same location," he said. "But we don't feel like staying here... we are reminded of the same faces and memories."

- 'Important for closure' -

Nearby, a woman wept as she embraced a framed picture of her deceased relatives, while another family scattered rose petals at the ruins of the hostel in honour of their son.

Relatives of the victims had expected a final report by Friday to explain why the disaster happened.

But with investigations continuing, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is expected to issue only an interim report.

As required by international law, the AAIB published a preliminary report a month after the disaster.

That 15-page document said the fuel supply to the jet's engines was cut off moments before impact, raising questions about possible pilot error.

It also published a conversation between the captain and his co-pilot about the fuel supply being cut off -- two brief sentences that sparked theories of pilot suicide.

The report was met with strong criticism.

It did not say why the fuel switches were turned off -- whether it was the fault of a pilot, or a result of a malfunction.

Relatives of the victims are meeting at a conference organised by lawyers, along with aviation and air safety experts in Ahmedabad.

They are due to hold a candlelight vigil after sunset.

"Why are authorities taking so much time to assess the crash?" asked Nilesh Joshi, whose wife Kaminiben Nilesh Joshi was killed, while returning home to Britain after attending a wedding in India.

"The release of the report is important for closure, for people like me who have lost their loved ones," Joshi, who had come from London to attend the conference, told AFP.

Only one passenger survived, Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who has said he has "significant psychological scars" following the crash -- in which his brother died -- and "constant unanswered questions" about why it took place.

Vijay Sengal still remembers the deafening sound when the plane came down.

Sengal, a sanitation inspector at a nearby hospital, was one of the first to try to rescue the injured.

"When we tried to pick up bodies, the body wouldn't come... instead, it was someone's hand, someone's leg," he said.

He said that he, like many others, avoids the area after dark, fearing it is haunted.

"We believe in gods and also in souls," he said. "Those passengers sitting in the plane, maybe they still have some work stuck, their last wish still unfulfilled."

(D.Sanchez--TAG)