Panel Formed to Probe, Report in Three Months

Death toll goes up to 274

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The death toll in the London-bound Air India Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad rose to 274 on Saturday.

Stepping up the efforts to examine the causes that may have led to the disaster, the Centre set up a highlevel multi-disciplinary panel headed by the Union Home Secretary to examine the causes that led to the disaster.

As investigators pore over wreckage at the BJ Medical College hostel and canteen complex for clues after the crash of the Air India flight 171, operated by Boeing 787-8 aircraft on Thursday, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said aviation regulator DGCA has ordered "extended surveillance" for the Tataowned airline's Boeing 787 series planes.

Meanwhile, the pilots of the London-bound Air India flight which crashed 36 seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad sent one last radio message to Air Traffic Control at 1.39 pm, the Civil Aviation Ministry said Saturday.

The Ministry said the pilots made the distress call after the plane failed T to rise above 650 feet. But the ATC's responses got no reply; the plane had crashed by then.

"Mayday, Mayday..." were the final words of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his crew before the heavily-fuelled Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a college students' hostel in a residential area near the airport, exploding into a fireball that killed all but one of the 242 people on board.

Overall 274 deaths have been confirmed, including those on the ground, in India's worst aviation disaster in nearly 15 years; that was in May 2010 when an Air India Boeing 737 flight from Dubai overshot the runway at Mangaluru airport and crashed into a gorge, killing 158 people on board.