a day ago
Tragic stories of Air India passengers just emerging
A man who had travelled to India to carry out his late wife's final wish, is among the dead in the Air India disaster.
Dad-of-two Arjun Patoliya was heading home to the UK after a vigil to scatter his wife's ashes in the Narmada River in the Amreli region near Ahmadabad, as was her final wish.
His wife Bharatiben had tragically died the previous week in London, leaving their two young daughters, aged four and eight, devastated. Smoke rises after a plane crash shortly after takeoff from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India's western state of Gujarat. Pic: Nandan Dave/Anadolu via Getty Images
Mr Patoliya was heading home to the UK and boarded flight AI 171 after completing the funeral ceremony for his young wife the previous day.
He died along with 240 other people aboard the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as it fell from the sky on take off from Ahmadabad airport yesterday afternoon (Thursday) and slammed into the densely populated area of Meghani, less than one minute after take-off.
The story of the Patoliya family is just one of many harrowing accounts emerging in the wake of the tragedy, and while investigators begin the task of trying to piece together exactly what happened, the human cost of the disaster is just emerging as relatives share photos and videos their loved ones had sent as they prepared for take off. The Air India flight AI171 that crashed in Ahmedabad. Pic: EyePress News/REX/Shutterstock
Dr. Prateek Joshi, and his wife Dr. Komi Vyas, sent a photo of their three children, huge grins of excitement on their faces, to their relatives in India and the UK, captioning the photo 'New Beginnings' as they began their journey to a new life in London.
Dr. Joshi had been working in the UK for a number of years, and his wife and three children were moving to join him there. The children, twin boys aged five and a little girl of eight years of age died alongside their parents in the crash.
And their stories are just two of many which will no doubt come to light in the coming days. Every single passenger on that plane had their own reasons for taking that flight, not knowing what lay ahead. Firefighters work at the site where Air India flight 171 crashed in a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad. Pic: Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images
Whatever the Air Accident Investigators conclude from their examination of the wreckage and the limited conversations harvested from the Black Box flight recording, the human cost of this tragedy and the suffering and pain of relatives who waved loved ones off at Ahmadabad, as well as those waiting with open arms in London, is immense.
And those stories are just beginning.
