British families accuse Air India of abandoning crash victims

The families of British victims of June’s Air India crash have accused the airline of “silence and indifference”, saying they feel abandoned three months after the disaster that killed 242 passengers and crew.

In their open letter to Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper — first reported in The Times newspaper today and echoed across the British media — relatives of two passengers whose remains were mishandled demanded answers and accountability from Air India.

“Not only did we lose our family members in this tragedy,” wrote Miten Patel, the son of Ashok and Shobhana Patel, and Tom Donaghey, brother of Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, “but have since endured the unimaginable pain of their remains being mishandled, mislabelled, commingled and in one devastating case, completely lost without any explanation or any sort of empathetic response regarding this whatsoever from the authorities in India,” the letter stated, as cited in the British media.

They added in the same letter, reported in the British media: “We are not asking for sympathy but are asking for accountability, responsibility and action. The silence and indifference that we have faced are further traumatising and have added to our grief and sorrow.”

Families complain that Air India’s interim compensation of about Rs 20.4 lakh (GBP 21,500) is derisory. Many have turned to the London law firm Keystone Law to fight for more. Quoted in the British press, Keystone lawyer James Healy-Pratt, representing more than 20 British families, said: “The families want another interim report by the Indian accident and investigation branch which clears up some of the mess they left from their preliminary report.”

Air India’s parent company Tata Sons has promised a yet-to-be-seen Rs 80.7 lakh (GBP 85,000) per family from a charitable fund. But relatives say they remain in the dark about how and when the money will reach them, and whether it covers the full scope of their loss. One widow, quoted in the British media about her husband, the crash’s sole survivor, said: “Everything happened in front of him and the main thing is he lost his brother. He’s not talking to anyone in the media, even in India.”

The criticism goes far beyond money. The mishandling of remains, where coffins were said to contain the wrong or commingled bodies, is regarded by families as one of the airline’s most unforgivable failures. Air India has also been accused of systemic lapses in training, crew rostering and governance.

India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, recently flagged more than fifty safety-related shortcomings across the airline, including failures in pilot training and fatigue management. To compound the anger, two Air India whistleblowers have alleged they were dismissed after warning of a malfunction in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner door more than a year before the Ahmedabad crash, a claim that the airline denies.

These revelations have fed into the perception of an airline in crisis-management mode rather than one genuinely committed to transparency and accountability. Lawyers say Air India has failed to explain the black-box data, and families remain angered that the preliminary accident report in July only fuelled speculation about cockpit error without offering clear answers.

By international standards, the airline’s response also looks inadequate. After the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in 2018, families were quickly offered compensation packages higher than those now on the table from Air India. Malaysia Airlines, despite the chaos surrounding MH370 and MH17, set up dedicated global support systems and direct communication channels for relatives within weeks. By contrast, bereaved families in Britain complain that they have been left to navigate unanswered phone calls, conflicting statements, and an airline bureaucracy that appears more focused on minimising liability than addressing grief.

None of this comes as a surprise to long-time passengers. Once proudly marketed as “the Maharaja of the skies”, Air India has for decades been synonymous with delays, shabby service and indifferent staff. The crash and its aftermath are now being seen by many as the culmination of years of decline: an airline that never fully recovered from its reputation for inefficiency has now revealed much deeper flaws in safety, training and crisis response.

Air India, in a corporate statement carried by the British media, said: “Care for family members remains our priority. We are keenly aware this continues to be a difficult time and want to support wherever we can.”

But for many families, those words ring hollow. The combination of unanswered questions, delayed compensation, mishandled remains and evidence of wider safety lapses suggests a pattern of irresponsibility rather than an isolated tragedy.

For me, the families’ outrage is not surprising. Earlier this year, I was booked to fly Air India and witnessed its chaotic handling of schedules and refunds. At one point, I was asked to pay an astonishing Rs 1.1 lakh (about GBP 900) simply to change the date of my return flight. When I queried the charge, repeated emails to Air India’s London office went unanswered, including messages addressed directly to Neelu Singh, one of the airline’s senior managers.

When replies did arrive, they took the form of pro forma responses from Ravi Rajput in the customer experience team, which ignored the substance of my complaint; emails addressed to CEO Campbell Wilson similarly went unanswered. That was a minor inconvenience compared with the trauma now endured by grieving families, but it spoke of the same pattern. Air India’s failure to take responsibility, to communicate honestly, and to treat its passengers with dignity has turned a human tragedy into an ongoing ordeal.