1985 revisited: 131 bodies recovered from Air India disaster

RAF, royal navy, and US air-force crews have returned to base and only the Irish air corps will continue to fly over the area where the ill-fated Boeing 747 disappeared last Sunday with the loss of 329 lives.

Two naval vessels, the Aisling and the Emer, will remain on station.

The decision to scale down came after only one body — that of a child — was taken from the sea yesterday. Rescue experts now believe that it will be several days before the bodies of other passengers appear on the surface.

The presence of sharks in the search area makes even this prediction provisional and adds a further harrowing dimension to the tragedy for relatives of the victims.

Up to late last night, no next of kin had arrived in Cork, but some are expected today. Indian air official, James Martin, said yesterday that 30 relatives of passengers and crew were on standby at Heathrow Airport to come to Cork.

All have been asked to fill in forms listing distinguishing features about the victims. Sources at Cork Regional Hospital (now Cork University Hospital) said yesterday that dental records, personal documentation, and fingerprints will be used, rather than visual identification.

The expected influx of victims’ relatives to Cork may not materialise. Air India yesterday postponed plans to fly relatives to identify the bodies of the crash victims, after being advised by the government that most of the bodies were not recognisable. The airline is to wait until today to make a final decision.

“We would like to encourage people to go,” an Air India spokesman said, “but there is no point in sending a number of people to see a ghastly sight.”

Up to last night, 131 bodies had been recovered and were at Cork Regional Hospital. Yesterday, 15 autopsies were carried out, but today that number is predicted to be much higher.

“We expect the whole 131 post mortems will be carried out within the next two days or so,” Garda press officer Frank Hanlon said yesterday.

Two more pathologists are to join the team of five already functioning at the Regional Hospital. There will also be a corresponding increase in the number of police forensic experts.

The hospital has been inundated with offers of accommodation for the relatives of the victims. According to a tourist board spokesman, through whom the offers were made, nearly 60 families said they would put up members of visiting rescue teams and victims’ next of kin.

A spokesman said that special arrangements had been made, so that any relatives who would come to Cork could grieve and be comforted with dignity.

Yesterday, the taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, visited Cork Airport and the Regional Hospital to see the operations for himself.

He warmly praised the work of the rescue teams, medical personnel, and airport staff. He told a press conference that the authorities would fully investigate the possibility of criminal action, but would not be drawn on the theory that a bomb was responsible for the disaster.

However, both the Indian and Canadian authorities now believe that terrorists were responsible for the crash. Indian officials believe two Sikh terrorists, sought for their involvement in a plot to kill the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, may have been involved in the crash of the Boeing jet and also in an explosion at Tokyo Airport two days ago. Canadian sources believe that the two events may be linked.

Canadian newspapers reported that a suspected Sikh terrorist, identified as Lai Singh, was aboard a Canadian Pacific Airways flight to Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday.

Singh held a ticket for the connecting flight to Tokyo, which left seven hours later, but he did not board the plane, the paper said. Singh’s luggage, however, was loaded on the plane to Tokyo, the newspaper said.

Another suspect, Ammand Singh, flew on Saturday to Toronto, where Air India’s Flight 182 originated.

After a stop in Montreal, the plane, on Sunday, headed for London en route to New Delhi and Bombay.

As the search for bodies and wreckage from the Air India 747 continued, American and British helicopter crews were facing a new hazard — the sharks.

Definite confirmation of the sharks in the area came yesterday from American air crews, while pressmen were out at the scene in a light aircraft for the first time since Sunday’s disaster, the third-worst in aviation history.

Clearance for the flight was eventually granted after two days of hassle with officials.

During the 60 minutes journalists spent over the area —160 miles (250km) south west of Cork Airport — the presence of the sharks was confirmed.

One American helicopter pilot was reluctant to put a crew member down into the water, because sharks had been spotted directly beneath. This is a further difficulty for the helicopter crews from Britain’s RAF and US air force.

They have been winching down divers into the sea as part of the regular retrieval method for bodies and wreckage over the past 48 hours.

Several times over the radio intercom of the six-seater Navajo, helicopter pilots were heard giving shark warnings and sightings to the big four-engined US AFC 130 aircraft, which took over the co-ordination of the air-sea search yesterday from the RAF and the royal navy.

In the course of the hour they spent over the crash scene, reporters counted 36 pieces of the wreckage — by using white smoke flares — mostly small pieces.

But one of the largest pieces recovered was a yellow-coloured cowling with red Air India markings.

It measured about 10 sq ft.

A big American H.H. 53 helicopter, known as the Jolly Green Giant since the days of Vietnam, put a man into the sea four times in a vain attempt to get the cowling on board.

It proved too big for the door of the helicopter and had to be dropped back into the sea and marked with bright-yellow dye.

From a height of 600ft reporters could see large amounts of wreckage from the jumbo decks of the Emer and the Challenger.

By 1.30pm, it was evident that the remaining wreckage floating on the surface was dispersed over a very wide area.