(Pictures: Courtesy of The Family of Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek)
A grieving mother whose son died in the Air India Flight 171 crash returned to the UK to find out she had been given the wrong body.
Amanda Donaghey travelled to Ahmedabad from her home in France to bring her son, Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek’s remains home.
Fiongal, 39, was returning from India on June 12 with his husband, Jamie, 45, where the couple had celebrated their wedding anniversary.
(Pictures: The College of Psychic Studies)
The pair were the first named victims of the crash, the first fatal incident to involve a Boeing 787, which crashed seconds after takeoff, killing all but one of the people onboard.
Having enjoyed a ‘magical experience’, the pair posted a video on social media captioned with the message ‘Goodbye India’ just before they boarded the flight.
Three days after arriving in Gujarat, Ms Donaghey, 66, was told that her son’s DNA had been matched to a body found in the wreckage.
She returned to Gatwick Airport intending to bury Fiongal’s body next to that of Jamie, which had already been identified and repatriated.
However, just as the family made funeral plans for Fiongal and his husband, a British coroner, having run a second DNA test, revealed that the body was not Ms Donaghey’s son.
The heartbroken mother told the Sunday Times: ‘We don’t know what poor person is in that casket. This is an appalling thing to have happened.’
Fiongal’s is not the only misidentified body from the crash.
Miten Patel said the coffin he believed contained his mother, Shobhana, 71,had been found to contain ‘other remains’.
Shobana and her husband Ashok, 74, were both killed on Flight 171. Both of them were finally buried earlier this week in the UK.
Doubts still remain as to whether bodies buried in India without being DNA tested a second time were correctly identified before being laid to rest.
James Healey Pratt, an aviation lawyer at Keystone Law who is representing 20 bereaved families said that he was in contact with the Foreign Office and UK authorities.
‘These families deserve answers about how this co-mingling of DNA and misidentification of remains occurred’, he said.
A spokesperson for the Government said that formal identification of victims was the responsibility of Indian authorities and that it was liaising with both central and national government, while acknowledging it is an ‘extremely distressing time’ for those who have lost loved ones.
An investigation into the cause of the crash is focusing on the deployment of the fuel control switches to ‘cutoff’ mode, possibly by either the captain or first officer.
To prevent accidental activation, the switches are fitted with a stop-lock mechanism.
A preliminary report revealed that one of the pilots asked the other why he had turned the engines to cutoff mode, to which he answered he hadn’t.
It remains unclear whether the pilot asking the question was the captain or the first officer, who was flying the aircraft at the time.
Former pilot and aviation expert David Learmount said that if one of the men on the flight deck had knowingly flicked the switch, he would be aware that it would cause the aircraft to crash.
He said: ‘It is inevitable that deliberate action by flight crew should be considered when a disaster like AI171 occurs. The India Air Accident Investigation Bureau will undoubtedly investigate this possibility.
‘But just one part of the tragedy is that, when all the flight crew die, their intentions will never be known for certain.’
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