Air India crash: UK victim Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek's body wrongly identified
A British mother who lost her son in the devastating Air India crash made a truly horrific discovery after his remains were sent home in a casket.
The mother of a British wellness influencer who died in the Air India crash has opened up about the “appalling” moment she discovered officials had sent back the wrong body.
Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek and his partner Jamie were among 261 people killed in June when Air India flight AI171 crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, India.
The pair had travelled to India for what was supposed to be a peaceful 10-day wellness retreat.
Instead, their journey ended in disaster, and Mr Greenlaw-Meek’s grieving mother, Amanda Donaghey, was forced to fly to India to search for answers.
“Visiting the site and seeing it was something I felt like I had to do. I wanted to understand what had happened,” she told The Sunday Times.
“I remember all these burnt trees. The trees were scorched black. But there were still birds and squirrels in those trees, which I found quite profound. It was like a bomb site.”
“You would think it was from a war scene, but there were still these small birds twittering.”
Ms Donaghey, 66, provided a blood sample to help Indian authorities match her DNA to her son’s remains.
Local officials then informed her that Mr Greenlaw-Meek’s body had been found and would be returned to the UK in a sealed casket.
But while planning his funeral, she received a devastating phone call: further DNA testing by a British coroner revealed the remains were not her son’s.
“It was heartbreaking,” she said.
“We don’t know what poor person is in that casket. This is an appalling thing to have happened.”
Now, Ms Donaghey is demanding a full investigation and government support in locating her son’s actual remains.
“Bring Fiongal home,” she said.
Her case is not unique, with mix-ups becoming a grisly trademark of the aviation disaster.
Other British families affected by the crash have experienced similar trauma.
One family reportedly received “co-mingled” remains, a mix of body parts from more than one individual, and had to delay the funeral while a separation process was undertaken, according to the Daily Mail last week.
A total of 52 British citizens died in the catastrophe, which claimed the lives of all but one of the 242 people on board, as well as 19 people on the ground.
Only a dozen UK victims’ remains have been repatriated so far.
Aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt, who is representing families of UK victims, said the misidentification of remains has compounded the grief for families already hurting.
Mr Healy-Pratt told the Press Association news agency that the return of victims’ remains had been marred by serious errors, which had been identified following a probe by a British coroner.
“In the first two caskets that were repatriated, in one of the caskets, there was co-mingling of DNA which did not relate to the deceased in that casket or the casket that accompanied it,” he said.
The lawyer added the coroner was then “able to determine that one particular loved one was not at all who the family thought they were”.
Miten Patel, whose mother Shobhana Patel died along with her husband in the disaster, told the BBC that “other remains” were found in her casket after her body was returned to Britain.
“People were tired and there was a lot of pressure. But there has to be a level of responsibility that you’re sending the right bodies to the UK,” he told the broadcaster.
Air India’s inspection of the locking feature on the fuel control switches of its existing Boeing 787 aircraft found “no issues”after a preliminary probe by Indian investigators found that they had flipped from the run position to cutoff shortly after takeoff.
India’s aviation regulator ordered the country’s airlines this week to investigate the locking feature on the switches of several Boeing models.
The order came after Boeing notified operators that the fuel switch locks on its jets were safe.
However, it was in line with a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2018, which recommended inspection of the locks to ensure they could not be moved accidentally.
Air India’s probe found no problems with the locking mechanism.
It said all of its Boeing 787-8 aircraft had also undergone “Throttle Control Module (TCM) replacement as per the Boeing maintenance schedule”, adding that the FCS was part of this module.
Other countries have also ordered their airlines to examine fuel switches on Boeing aircraft.
Singapore found them all to be “functioning properly”.
“Our checks confirmed that all fuel switches on SIA (Singapore Airlines) and Scoot’s Boeing 787 aircraft are functioning properly and comply with regulatory requirements,” an SIA spokesperson told AFP this week.
A report in the Wall Street Journal, which cited unidentified sources, said a cockpit recording of a conversation between the two pilots indicated the captain had cut off fuel to the engines.
India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which released the preliminary report, said it was still “too early to reach any definite conclusions”.
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It said the investigation’s final report would come out with “root causes and recommendations”.
“We urge the public and the media to refrain from spreading premature narratives that risk undermining the integrity of the investigative process,” it said in a statement.
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