Air India Flight AI 171 was airborne for just 32 seconds on June 12 before disaster struck. But the key to unlocking what brought down Boeing Co.’s most advanced jetliner may lie in a chilling 10-second gap buried in the crash probe’s timeline.
Both Sumeet Sabharwal, the senior captain monitoring the flight, and Clive Kunder, the junior co-pilot who was flying, were found fit for work, having adequately rested and been cleared in a routine preflight breath analyzer test. The aircraft lifted off the tarmac at 8:08:39 coordinated universal time, or around 1:38 p.m. local time in Ahmedabad, for its journey to London.
Russia and Ukraine discussed further prisoner swaps on Wednesday at a brief session of peace talks in Istanbul, but the sides remained far apart on ceasefire terms and a possible meeting of their leaders.
“We have progress on the humanitarian track, with no progress on a cessation of hostilities,” Ukraine’s chief delegate, Rustem Umerov, said after talks that lasted just 40 minutes.
He said Ukraine had proposed a meeting before the end of August between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He added: “By agreeing to this proposal, Russia can clearly demonstrate its constructive approach.”
Russia’s chief delegate Vladimir Medinsky said the point of a leaders’ meeting should be to sign an agreement, not to “discuss everything from scratch”.
He renewed Moscow’s call for a series of short ceasefires of 24-48 hours to enable the retrieval of bodies. Ukraine says it wants an immediate and much longer ceasefire.
The talks took place just over a week after the US president, Donald Trump, threatened heavy new sanctions on Russia and countries that buy its exports unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days.
There was no sign of any progress towards that goal, although both sides said there was discussion of further humanitarian exchanges following a series of prisoner swaps, the latest of which took place on Wednesday.
Medinsky said the negotiators agreed to exchange at least 1,200 more prisoners of war from each side, and Russia had offered to hand over another 3,000 Ukrainian bodies.
He said Moscow was working through a list of 339 names of Ukrainian children that Kyiv accuses it of abducting. Russia denies that charge and says it has offered protection to children separated from their parents during the war.
“Some of the children have already been returned back to Ukraine. Work is under way on the rest. If their legal parents, close relatives, representatives are found, these children will immediately return home,” said Medinsky.
Umerov said Kyiv was expecting “further progress” on POWs, adding: “We continue to insist on the release of civilians, including children.” Ukrainian authorities say at least 19,000 children have been forcibly deported.
Before the talks, the Kremlin had played down expectations, describing the two sides’ positions as diametrically opposed and saying no one should expect miracles.
At 40 minutes, the meeting was even shorter than the two sides’ previous encounters on 16 May and 2 June, which lasted a combined total of under three hours.
Oleksandr Bevz, a member of the Ukrainian delegation, said Kyiv had proposed a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting in August because that would fall within the deadline set by Trump for a deal.
Putin turned down a previous challenge from Ukraine’s president to meet in person and has said he does not see him as a legitimate leader because Ukraine, which is under martial law, did not hold new elections when Zelenskyy’s five-year mandate expired last year.
Trump has patched up relations with Zelenskyy after a public row with him at the White House in February, and has lately expressed growing frustration with Putin.
Three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters last week that Putin, unfazed by Trump’s ultimatum, would keep fighting in Ukraine until the west engaged on his terms for peace, and that his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance.
Authorities in India sent the wrong remains to some British families whose loved ones were killed in a plane crash last month, their lawyer has claimed, as relatives reckoned with the human cost of the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade.
At least two UK nationals were discovered to have been misidentified after they were repatriated, according to James Healy-Pratt, an international aviation lawyer who is representing some of the British relatives of victims.
In one case, a coroner in London discovered that the DNA of several bodies had been co-mingled in one of the caskets, Healy-Pratt told UK news agency PA Media.
Dr Fiona Shaw “picked up DNA anomalies” when the bodies were first repatriated, Healy-Pratt said.
“My understanding was that the co-mingling was at the very beginning, which alerted Dr Wilcox to the fact that she had to be 100% assiduous about checking the identification of the incoming remains,” the lawyer added.
“She was then able to determine that one particular loved one was not at all who the family thought they were,” said Healy-Pratt.
All but one of 242 passengers and crew members were killed on June 12, after an Air India jet lost momentum and hurtled into a densely populated neighborhood in Ahmedabad, western India.
The London-bound aircraft had barely left the runway of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport before it spun out of control and nosedived into the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel – also killing 19 people on the ground.
Authorities have not yet released the definitive cause of the crash, but a preliminary report suggested that the fuel control switches in the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had been flipped, depriving the engines of power.
In an audio recording from the black box, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he flipped the switches, according to the assessment by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau published last week. The other pilot responds that he did not.
Moments later, the switches were flipped to turn the fuel supply back on. Both engines relit and one began to “progress to recovery,” but it was too late to halt the plane’s tumultuous descent.
Of those killed on board, at least 169 were Indian nationals, seven were Portuguese and one was from Canada. The only survivor was Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, one of 53 UK passengers that day who told local media that he escaped by clinging onto a small space near the door by his seat.
The relatives of three victims said they were “deeply troubled” by the revelations on Wednesday, calling on authorities to act with “care, co-ordination and respect.”
“Recent developments have only confirmed what many feared: that serious mistakes may have been made, and that the dignity and rights of victims and their families were not safeguarded as they should have been,” they said in a statement.
The relatives of Akeel Nanabawa, his wife Hannaa Vorajee and their four-year-old daughter Sara Nanabawa added that while they are “confident” they received the “correct bodies” – they were still “deeply troubled by what this means for other families who may still be searching for certainty and closure.”
“This isn’t just a personal tragedy; it is a collective one.”
India’s foreign ministry had been “working closely with the UK side from the moment these concerns and issues” were raised, according to a spokesperson.
Authorities conducted identification of victims using “established protocols and technical requirements,” foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a post on X on Wednesday.
“All mortal remains were handled with the utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased,” Jaiswal added. “We are continuing to work with the UK authorities on addressing any concerns related to this issue.”
The case came on the heels of a meeting in London between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, as the two nations sign a landmark free trade agreement.
Healy-Pratt, who is demanding “financial justice” for the families, said he believes the allegations will be on the agenda for the talks this week.
