Indian lost 16 relatives in crash

An Air India official said Sunday that most of the passengers on a crashed Dubai-Mangalore flight were Indians living in Dubai, while a local daily said an Indian man lost 16 relatives in the crash.

 “The majority of (passengers) were living in Dubai” but “some were visiting,” Anand Panbey, the United Arab Emirates country manager for Air India, of which Air India Express is a subsidiary, told AFP.

The Khaleej Times reported on Sunday that Samir Sheikh lost his wife, two children, uncle and 12 other relatives in Saturday’s crash of an Air India Express plane in Mangalore, with just eight of 166 people on board surviving.

Sheikh’s 16 relatives were travelling to India to attend the funeral of his grandmother who died on Friday, Khaleej Times said. Sheikh, a Saudi Arabia-based businessman, was in Mumbai and waiting to travel to Mangalore at the time of the crash.

The Air India Express Boeing 737-800 careered off the “table-top” runway after touching down at Mangalore’s Bajpe airport and ploughed into a forested gorge, bursting into flames. The passengers “were all Indian nationals,” as were the crew except for the aircraft’s pilot, Panbey said.

source: thenews.com