What good is this report to us: Kin

One month after losing his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren in the Air India crash, Anil Vyas struggled to find meaning in the preliminary investigation report that detailed fuel switches and flight recorder data but stopped short - as preliminary investigations customarily do - from offering conclusive explanation for why 260 people died.

- HT Correspondents

"What good is this report to us now? It won't bring back my daughter, her husband, or their children," said Vyas over the loss of Dr Komi Vyas, her husband Dr Prateek Joshi and their three children aged 5, 5 and 8.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's 15-page preliminary report, released on Saturday, provided precise technical details about Flight 171's final moments after it took off from Ahmedabad on June 12 but it did not provide the closure the families of the dead were seeking.

The preliminary report has not satisfied Imtiaz Ali, who lost his younger brother Javed Ali Syed along with his wife and two children, aged 6 and 4, in the crash.

"A lot of questions still remains in our minds," he said, declining to assign blame. "The report hasn't given us a satisfactory conclusion to the cause yet. This was just preliminary, it had a fair bit of details and information, but the cause, the real reason why the plane went down, is not clear."

Ali questioned the circumstances surrounding the fuel switch movements while defending the flight crew.