The Air India Express (AIE) has commenced steps to hand over the personal effects of the passengers of the flight that crashed at the Calicut international airport on Friday.
U.S.-based Kenyon, an agency for emergency response and rescue operations, has been entrusted with the task of search and retrieval of the personal effects lying at the accident site at Karipur and from the ill-fated B-737 aircraft.
“The agency will take care of the collection, recording, cleaning, inventorying, photographing, cataloguing and arranging the return of the personal items to the families of the 191 passengers on the flight from Dubai to Kozhikode,” official sources told The Hindu. Besides, unidentified items, including gold and other precious items, recovered from the crash site will also be catalogued by the agency.
Identification
Once the exercise is completed, the families would be contacted for the identification and handing over of the things. The action taken is in conformance with the recommended guidelines of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association for airlines globally. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) norms on aircraft accident victims and their families too will be followed.
The same crisis management services provider had handed over the personal effects of passengers in the Mangaluru plane crash in which a Boeing 737 aircraft of the AIE overshot the runway and burst into flames killing 158 passengers.
The airline is trying its best to provide all assistance to the passengers’ families, sources say. Chief Operating Officer, AIE, K. Shyam Sundar and senior officials are camping in Kozhikode and overseeing relief operations. The AIE is yet to commence steps to pay the interim relief of ₹10 lakh to the families of the deceased and financial assistance to the injured announced by the Civil Aviation Minister, sources said.
