King Charles honours Air India crash victims at annual Trooping the Colour parade
King Charles III and other senior royals wore black armbands at the Trooping the Colour military parade on Saturday as a mark of respect for the victims of the Air India plane crash.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, India, on Thursday, killing at least 270 people in the worst aviation disaster in a decade.
Only one of the 242 passengers and crew on board survived, while others were killed as the plane struck a medical college's hostel as it came down.
The plane was carrying 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.
A minute's silence was held after the king inspected the parade, which marks his official birthday.
The king was joined on the balcony by Queen Camilla, the Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
King Charles requested the changes "as a mark of respect for the lives lost, the families in mourning and all the communities affected by this awful tragedy", a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.
The monarch's annual birthday parade, known as Trooping the Colour, is a historic ceremony filled with pageantry and military bands in which the king reviews his troops on Horse Guards Parade adjacent to St James' Park in central London.
The military ceremony dates back to a time when flags of the battalion, known as colours, were "trooped,'' or shown, to soldiers in the ranks so they could recognise them.
Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, held a similar moment of silence in 2017 when Trooping the Colour took place three days after a fire ripped through the Grenfell Tower apartment bloc in west London, killing 72 people.
Reuters/AP
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London: King Charles and other senior royals wore black armbands at the annual 'Trooping the Colour' military parade on Saturday as a mark of respect for the victims of the Air India plane crash. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, India, on Thursday, killing at least 270 people in the worst aviation disaster in a decade. A minute's silence was held after the king inspected the parade, which marks his official birthday. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said the King had requested amendments to the program 'as a mark of respect for the lives lost, the families in mourning and all the communities affected by this awful tragedy'. Later, the Royal Family stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the traditional fly past. King Charles and Queen Camilla were joined by the Prince and Princess of Wales, alongside their three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. As the crowd started to chant 'God save the King' and 'we love the King', anti-monarchy protestors responded by chanting 'not my King', the BBC reported.
