Tata Sons and Air India Chairman N Chandrasekaran on Monday told the airline staff to use the plane crash in Ahmedabad as an "act of force" to build a "safer airline", as a high-level Government panel held its first meeting to probe the possible causes of the air disaster.
Meanwhile Four days after the deadliest crash in the country in three decades claimed 270 lives, 119 victims have so far been identified through DNA matching with their family members, authorities said, adding mortal remains of 76 of them including that of former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani were handed over to their families.
Addressing close to 700 employees and the leadership team across the Air India headquarters and Air India Training Academy in Gurugram, Chandrasekaran urged them to stay on course, terming the accident the most "heartbreaking" crisis of his career.
"We need to show resilience. We need to use this incident as an act of force to build a safer airline," he said, urging the employees to be "strong”. "So we have to make sure that we stay the course. Be more determined in everything we do. We need to wait for the investigation to find out (the cause)," the Tata Sons chief said.
"I've seen a reasonable number of crises in my career, but this is the most heartbreaking one which I never thought I would see," sources quoted Chandrasekaran as having told the meeting.
As grief-stricken families endure an agonising wait for bodies of the victims, Ahmedabad Civil Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Rakesh Joshi appealed to them not to panic over the time consuming process of matching the DNA samples of relatives with the remains of the deceased. He expressed the hope that the DNA profiling all the victims will be completed by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.
"We visited the DNA collection centre yesterday but were told that our samples were yet to be matched," Pooja Sukhadare, a relative of crew member Roshni Songhare, told PTI.
Sukhadare has been camping in Ahmedabad since the day of the disaster with the father and brother of Songhare, whose family resides at Dombivli in Maharashtra's Thane district.
The high-level panel, chaired by Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, deliberated on various possibilities that could have led to the Ahmedabad crash at its first meeting in Delhi.
It was set up by the government on Saturday to ascertain the "root cause" of the accident and assess any contributing factors including mechanical failure, human error and regulatory compliances.
The panel heard the opinion of various stake-holders about the possible causes and deliberated on steps to be taken to check future occurrence of such accidents by formulating Standard Operating Procedures(SOPs).
Since a separate investigation is also being carried out by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is looking into the technical aspects of the crash, the panel discussed about the possible causes and lesson to be taken from it, sources said.
Probe agencies were looking into all possible causes for the crash, including loss of thrust in both engines of the aircraft, multiple bird strikes, or a potential wing flap issue. The doomed aircraft's black box — which includes the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder — has already been recovered and may hold vital clues to understanding what led to the disaster.
The United States' National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has also launched a parallel probe into the crash, drawing several international experts to the accident site.
The NTSB is conducting a parallel probe under international protocols, as the aircraft is American-made, an official release said.