Live Nation has submitted a proposal to the Trump administration, pushing for changes to the secondary ticket market.
The ticketing giant’s proposal calls for a cap on resale prices at 20% above face value, Variety reported Tuesday (July 8), citing Live Nation’s submission.
Live Nation is also proposing expanding artist control of ticket resales and strengthening government action against bad actors through enhanced website monitoring and stricter enforcement of the BOTS Act from 2016. The BOTS Act bans the use of automated systems to buy tickets.
Live Nation’s submission was reportedly delivered to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on the final day of their public comment period.
The proposal directly addresses President Donald Trump‘s March executive order targeting “unscrupulous middlemen” in live entertainment, “who sit at the intersection between artists and fans and impose egregious fees while providing minimal value.”
“Many assume the system is rigged… this industry deserves a system that protects the artist-fan connection the way the artist meant it to be, not as corrupted by profiteering interlopers.”
Live Nation
In the document reviewed by Variety, Live Nation wrote: “Many assume the system is rigged… this industry deserves a system that protects the artist-fan connection the way the artist meant it to be, not as corrupted by profiteering interlopers.”
Trump signed the “Combating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market executive order in March with rock-country musician Kid Rock standing by his side in the Oval Office. The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FTC to ensure the proper enforcement of competition laws in the concert and entertainment industry.
At the time, Kid Rock directed criticism at Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster, suggesting the ticketing giant benefits from secondary market sales at the expense of fans.
“If Ticketmaster sells a ticket and you buy a ticket and go to a show, you’re in a lot of ways their worst customer,” Kid Rock explained. “They make another 17 or whatever percentage every time that ticket resells, so they don’t want to enforce the BOTS Act necessarily because they’re making more money off it.”
Shortly after the executive order was signed, Live Nation issued a statement supporting it, saying: “Scalpers and bots prevent fans from getting tickets at the prices artists set, and we thank President Trump for taking them head-on. We support any meaningful resale reforms — including more enforcement of the BOTS Act, caps on resale prices, and more.”
Subsequently, in May, the DOJ teamed up with the FTC to launch a public inquiry to identify “unfair and anticompetitive practices and conduct in the live concert and entertainment industry.”
They invited members of the public to submit comments and information on “harmful practices and on potential regulation or legislation to protect consumers in the industry.” The agencies said they will use the information in their preparation of the report and recommendations directed by Trump’s March order.
Seperately, Live Nation faces a civil antitrust lawsuit filed by the DOJ and 40 state and district attorneys general. The DOJ and the attorneys general sued Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, in May 2024, alleging “monopolization and other unlawful conduct that thwarts competition in markets across the live entertainment industry.”
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Demonstrators gather in British capital for second week in a row in support of recently banned activism group.
United Kingdom police have arrested dozens of people at a protest in London calling for a ban on the campaign group Palestine Action to be lifted.
The protest at London’s Parliament Square on Saturday was the latest demonstration against the UK’s crackdown on Palestinian rights activism.
“Officers have made 41 arrests for showing support for a proscribed organisation. One person has been arrested for common assault,” London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
The arrests followed last Saturday’s detention of 29 people, including a priest and some health professionals, who had gathered at Parliament Square after a last-ditch legal bid to stop the group from being proscribed under “anti-terrorism” legislation failed.
The ban, which cleared Parliament in early July, was passed after activists broke into a military base last month and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest at the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which leading rights groups have described as a genocide.
The move has raised fears about freedom of expression in the country, putting Palestine Action on a par with armed groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) in the UK, making it a criminal offence to support or be part of the protest group, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Protesters at this week’s demonstration had gathered near a statue of former South African President Nelson Mandela outside the British Parliament, silently holding up placards saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
The last of the protesters was lifted from the Nelson Mandela statue shortly after 2:30pm local time (13:30 GMT).
Campaign group Defend Our Juries, which had announced it was holding rallies in several UK cities, called the ban “Orwellian” – a reference to the late English writer George Orwell, who wrote about totalitarianism and social injustice.
“Who do the police think they are serving in this?” challenged a spokesperson.
Defend Our Juries posted on X that police had also made arrests at other demonstrations in support of Palestine Action in Manchester, Cardiff and in Northern Ireland. Police have not yet confirmed the alleged arrests.
Launched in July 2020, Palestine Action says it uses “disruptive tactics” to target “corporate enablers” and companies involved in weapons manufacture for Israel, such as Israel-based Elbit Systems and French multinational Thales.
Even before the start of the war on Gaza, rights groups and UN experts have accused Israel of imposing a system of apartheid against Palestinians.
The British government has accused the group of causing millions of pounds of damage through its actions.
Opponents of the ban say using “anti-terrorism” law is inappropriate against a group focused on civil disobedience.
President Donald Trump has announced that the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% tariff on imports to the US from 1 August.
He warned he would impose even higher import taxes if either of the US trading partners decided to retaliate.
The 27-member EU – America’s biggest trading partner – said earlier this week it hoped to agree a deal with Washington before 1 August.
Trump has this week also said the US will impose new tariffs on goods from Japan, South Korea, Canada and Brazil, also starting from 1 August. Similar letters were sent this week to a number of smaller US trade partners.
In the letter sent on Friday to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump wrote: “We have had years to discuss our trading relationship with the European Union, and have concluded that we must move away from these long-term-large, and persistent, trade deficits, engendered by your tariff, and non-tariff, policies and trade barriers.”
“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from reciprocal,” the letter added.
The EU has been a frequent target of Trump’s criticism. On 2 April, he proposed a 20% tariff for goods from the bloc, as well as dozens of other trade partners. He then threatened to raise the EU import taxes to 50% as trade talks stalled.
Washington and Brussels had hoped to reach an agreement before a deadline of 9 July, but there have been no announcements on progress.
In 2024, the US trade deficit with the bloc was $235.6bn (€202bn; £174bn), according to the office of the US trade representative.
Von der Leyen said the EU remained ready “to continue working towards an agreement by Aug 1”.
“Few economies in the world match the European Union’s level of openness and adherence to fair trading practices,” her statement added.
“We will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required.”
Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement she trusted “a fair agreement” could be reached, adding: “It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.”
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on social media that the EU “must remain united and resolute” in its aim to reach a “mutually beneficial” deal with the US.
Germany’s Association of the Automotive Industry warned about the prospect of rising costs for German carmakers and suppliers, and said it was “regrettable that there is a threat of a further escalation of the trade conflict”.
In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump said the country had not done enough to stop North America becoming a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.
“Mexico has been helping me secure the border, BUT, what Mexico has done, is not enough,” Trump added.
In his letters to the EU and Mexico, Trump warned that if either trade partner retaliated with import duties of their own against the US, he would hit back by raising tariffs by a similar percentage over and above the 30%.
Mexico responded to Trump’s threat on Saturday, calling it an “unfair deal”.
Trump’s letter did not say if Mexico goods traded within the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement would be exempt from the proposed 1 August tariff hikes, as the White House said would be the case with Canada.
Earlier this week, the White House sent a letter to Canada threatening a 35% tariff.
As of Saturday, the Trump administration has now proposed tariff conditions on 24 countries and the EU.
While Trump’s administration has been in talks with trade partners for agreements, the president has so far announced the outlines of two such pacts with the United Kingdom and Vietnam.
Fuel control switches to the engines of an Air India flight that crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 260 people, were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position moments before impact, a preliminary investigation report said Saturday.
The report, issued by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), did not offer any conclusions or apportion blame for the June 12 disaster, but indicated that one pilot asked the other why he cut off fuel, and the second pilot responded that he had not.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was headed from Ahmedabad in western India to London when it crashed, killing all but one of the 242 people on board as well as 19 people on the ground.
In its 15-page report, the investigation bureau said that once the aircraft achieved its top recorded speed, “the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec”.
“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” it said.
The aircraft quickly began to lose altitude.
The switches then returned to the “RUN” position and the engines appeared to be gathering power, but “one of the pilots transmitted ‘MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY’”, the report said.
Air traffic controllers asked the pilots what was wrong, but then saw the plane crashing and called emergency personnel to the scene.
Investigation ongoing
Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu told reporters that investigators probed in a “mature, transparent” way.
“This is a preliminary report. We want the final report to come in, so let us wait for it,” he said.
Earlier this week, specialist website The Air Current, citing multiple sources familiar with the probe, reported it had “narrowed its focus to the movement of the engine fuel switches”, while noting that full analysis will “take months — if not longer”.
It added that “the focus of the investigators could change during that time”.
The Indian agency’s report said the US Federal Aviation Administration had issued an information bulletin in 2018 about “the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature”.
Though the concern was not considered an “unsafe condition” that would warrant a more serious directive, Air India told investigators it did not carry out suggested inspections as they were “advisory and not mandatory”.
Air India was compliant with all airworthiness directives and alert service bulletins on the aircraft, the report said.
The investigations bureau said there were “no recommended actions to B787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers”, suggesting no technical issues with the engines (GE) or the aircraft (Boeing).
The bureau said the investigation was ongoing, and that additional evidence and information had been “sought from the stakeholders”.
Boeing said in a statement it would “continue to support the investigation and our customer”, adding “our thoughts remain” with those affected by the disaster.
Air India said it was “working closely with stakeholders, including regulators.”
“We continue to fully cooperate with the AAIB and other authorities as their investigation progresses,” it said in a statement on X.
The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) stipulates that states heading an investigation must submit a preliminary report within 30 days of an accident.
US and British air accident investigators have taken part in the probe.
Suresh Mistry, who lost his daughter Kinal in the crash, told AFP his family was still coming to terms with the loss.
“How is possible that there is an internal issue with the flight and nobody knew? Even cars these days indicate when there is a problem. How does it not happen on flights?” he said.
Imtiyaz Ali, whose brother was killed along with his wife and two children, said the preliminary report took “nothing forward” for him.
“And (it) is not even close to a closure,” he said. “It feels like we are at the same spot, where we were a month ago when the crash happened.”
The plane was carrying 230 passengers — 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian — and 12 crew.
Dozens of people on the ground were injured.
One passenger miraculously survived, a British citizen who was seen walking out of the wreckage of the crash, and who has since been discharged from hospital.
Health officials in the Indian state of Gujarat initially said at least 279 people were killed, but forensic scientists reduced the figure after multiple scattered and badly burnt remains were identified.
At least 79 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Israeli attacks across Gaza, with dozens of children dying from malnutrition during Israel’s punishing months-long blockade, as ceasefire talks reportedly stall.
Among the victims on Saturday, 14 were killed in Gaza City, four of them in an Israeli strike on a residence on Jaffa Street in the Tuffah area, which injured 10 others.
At least 30 aid seekers were killed by Israeli army fire north of Rafah, southern Gaza, near the one operating GHF site, which rights groups and the United Nations have slammed as “human slaughterhouses” and “death traps”.
According to Al Jazeera Mubasher, Israeli forces fired directly at Palestinians in front of the aid distribution centre in the al-Shakoush area of Rafah.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli army opened fire indiscriminately on a large crowd during one of the attacks.
“Many desperate families in the north have been making dangerous journeys all the way to the south to reach the only operating distribution centre in Rafah,” he said.
“Many of the bodies are still on the ground,” Mahmoud said, adding that those who were wounded in the attack have been transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Amid relentless daily carnage rained upon starving aid seekers and the ongoing Israeli blockade, Gaza’s Government Media Office said 67 children have now died due to malnutrition, and 650,000 children under the age of five are at “real and immediate risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks”.
“Over the past three days, we have recorded dozens of deaths due to shortages of food and essential medical supplies, in an extremely cruel humanitarian situation,” the statement read.
“This shocking reality reflects the scale of the unprecedented humanitarian tragedy in Gaza,” the statement added.
Israel is engineering a “cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday, as the world body reported that since May, when GHF began its operations, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
“Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.
Mass displacement, expulsion ‘illegal and immoral’
As the Israeli military announced on Saturday that its forces attacked Gaza 250 times in the last 48 hours, Israeli officials have continued to push a plan to forcibly displace and eventually expel Palestinians.
Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” which will house 2.1 million Palestinians on the rubble of parts of the city of Rafah, which has been razed to the ground.
But Palestinians in Gaza have rejected the plan and reiterated that they would not leave the enclave. Rights groups, international organisations and several nations have slammed it as laying the ground for “ethnic cleansing”, the forcible removal of a population from its homeland.
Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the majority of Israelis are “really appalled” by Katz’s plan, which would be “illegal and immoral”.
“Anybody who will participate in this disgusting project will be involved in war crimes,” Elder said.
The message underlying the plan, he said, is that “there can’t be two people between the river and the sea, and those who deserve to have a state are only the Jewish people.”
As Israel announces its intention to force the population of Gaza into Rafah, Middle East professor at the University of Turin, Lorenzo Kamel, told Al Jazeera that the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and their concentration in restricted areas is nothing new.
In 1948, 77 years ago to this day, 70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the village of Lydda during what became known as the “march of death”.
“Many of them ended up in the Gaza Strip,” Kamel said, adding that the Israeli authorities have been forcing Palestinians into spaces similar to concentration camps for decades.
“This is not something new, but it has accelerated in the past months,” he said. The plan to gather the Gaza population on the ruins of Rafah is therefore “nothing but another camp in preparation for the deportation from the Gaza Strip”.
Ceasefire talks hang in the balance
Negotiations taking place in Qatar to cement a truce are stalling over the extent of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the Strip, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported on Saturday.
The indirect talks are expected to continue, despite the latest obstacles in clinching a deal based on a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire.
A Palestinian source said Hamas has not accepted the withdrawal maps which Israel has proposed, as they would leave about 40 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, including all of Rafah and further territories in northern and eastern Gaza.
Matters regarding the full and free flow of aid to a starving population, and guarantees, were also presenting a challenge.
Two Israeli sources said Hamas wants Israel to retreat to lines it held in a previous ceasefire, before it renewed its offensive in March.
Delegations from Israel and Hamas have been in Qatar since Sunday in a renewed push for an agreement.
MBW’s Key Songs In The Life Of… is a series in which we ask influential music industry figures about the tracks that have — so far — defined their journey and their existence. Taking on mission impossible this time round is Reservoir founder Golnar Khosrowshahi . The Key Songs… series is supported by Sony Music Publishing.
Reflecting on the challenge of choosing just a handful of tracks to represent her love of (and career in) music, Reservoir founder Golnar Khosrowshahihits upon a simple formula: “It’s equal parts easy and impossible”.
She explains: “It’s really easy to come up with the music that, decade after decade, has played a part in your life – and continues to do so. What’s impossible is to whittle it down and make choices.”
Born in Iran and now resident in New York (via a childhood in London and a fondly remembered spell in Canada), Golnar, after stints in the advertising and telecoms industries, founded Reservoir in 2007.
The still-independent company now controls a steadily expanding portfolio of copyrights and has relationships with writers including Joni Mitchell, Ali Tamposi, De La Soul and many others.
Her selections, of course, represent the rise of Reservoir, and the brilliance of those artists, but also her childhood, her background as a classically trained musician – and some of the most important moments in her personal life…
1) Glen Gould, Bach’s Invention No. 4 in D Minor (1963)
I’m a classically trained pianist, and my training was very focused on a lot of Bach. That is, for lack of a better word, the syllabus of any pianist who wants to have a path in classical performance.
I think the reasoning behind that is that the compositions are, at the same time, some of the most simple, as well as the most complicated music ever written.
I remember looking at the music when I was younger, and you judge difficulty based on the number of notes that you see on the page. And with a lot of those pieces, there aren’t that many! So you think, OK, this is easy, and yet… it’s simple, complicated and ultimately beautiful.
I performed a lot as part of examinations, recitals and competitions, quite basic at first – Minuets and Inventions – and I still have the muscle memory from when I was playing those pieces, which is interesting.
They got more complicated at the later levels, and one of my favorite collections of music is Glenn Gould’s recordings of Inventions and Sinfonias, from 1963, from where this first selection comes.
Classical music has stayed in my life. I chaired the board at Silkroad [a musical collective founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000] for 12 years, where many of the musicians were classically trained.
And then, because of Silkroad, I was working with Yo-Yo, who has released three versions of Bach’s Cello Suites, the most recent of which was in 2018. Part of the premiere of that was a performance at YouTube in Los Angeles, where he talks about what this music has meant to him. That opportunity came through our relationship with Lindsay Rothschild Berryman at YouTube who was a big champion of the project. She is now at Apple Music and we continue to work with her to promote the Reservoir roster.
So there are lot of full circle moments in there, and classical music, and Bach in particular, continues to be in my life today.
2) The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star (1979)
I grew up in London. I moved there [from Iran] in November 1978, in the middle of the school year amidst headlines about a fundamentalist bringing revolution.
At the time, as a family, we didn’t really know what was happening. It was Guy Fawkes night when we arrived in London and we had some infrastructure there already so we were very lucky.
This is on a Friday, maybe a Thursday – and we were in school by the following week. I don’t really know how that worked.
My mother, who was in her late 20s, had to do basic things, like get a car so she could pick me up from school. Which she did, in a VW Golf, between Hampstead and Belsize Park. We’d listen to Capital Radio 194, and we’d often hear Video Killed The Radio Star.
She would sing along, and so this was the song made it seem, for me, a seven-year-old at the time, that everything’s going to be OK. My mother’s still singing and dancing in the car, we’re going to be fine.
3) De La Soul, Me Myself And I (1989)
Obviously I’m biased here, but predating our professional relationship with them, pre-dating our bringing the music to streaming platforms, I remember this song as one of my first forays into hip-hop and that Daisy Age sound, which was really meaningful back then.
The professional part of the relationship came about in 2021, when we bought Tommy Boy. And then, subsequent to that, we had the pleasure of working with Pos and Dave and Mase for 18 months, clearing samples [the group’s music had not been released on streaming services at this point due to copyright disputes].
Unfortunately, Dave passed away a month before the music was going to be released, which made it a really bittersweet project, but ultimately incredible to actually bring the music out.
The number of people who responded to that to say thank you is unbelievable. I don’t feel like we should be thanked, of course, we’re not the creators; they deserve all the thanks and all the praise. We were a facilitator, but the number of people who do say thank you, it’s very touching, and it shows what this music means.
Going back to this particular song, I remember the impact it had on my life. It wasn’t just the sound, it was the graphics, the liners, the vocals, the subject matter, the tone… They created another dimension to the hip-hop universe.
4) Mary J Blige, Family Affair (2001)
In 2001 I was very shocked to find out that I was pregnant with twins!
That was also the year that Mary J Blige released Family Affair – and it’s still on my playlists.
All of a sudden I had this instant family, and the song took on a whole new meaning for me after my girls were born. Those early days of no sleep, constant bottles, and figuring out a new rhythm of life were intense. But this song made me smile, dance around the living room with my newborns, and feel like I could still bring joy into the chaos.
I think she has an incredible voice and, especially as a woman in the business, she has achieved so much over a long career.
Family Affair was all over the radio that year, and I feel like I heard it everywhere I went – in the supermarket, stores, and on TV. But when I listen to the song now, I am transported to that moment in time – those crazy days and nights of being a new mother.
5) Alicia Keys, Underdog (2020)
I am a big fan of Alicia Keys, and I’m particularly a fan of this song; it’s an anthem for so many people, myself included.
During Reservoir’s early days, I remember the feeling of stepping into a competitive landscape during some of the darkest days of the business. The music industry was witnessing instability and future forecasts for improvement looked bleak.
There were many moments of doubt. Not only was the industry volatile, but we were the new kids on the block. There were meetings we couldn’t get and tables we couldn’t get seats at, but the belief in what we were doing kept us going.
In 2020, when this song came out and I heard it for the first time, it took me right back to 2007 and where it all started. It reminded me that just because you’re underestimated, doesn’t mean you’re incapable.
Now that Reservoir has grown and found real success, Underdog still resonates. It keeps me grounded and reminds me of the humility and resilience it took to get here.
6) Shawn Mendes and Camilla Cabello, Señorita (2019)
Havana and Señorita were two of the early successes of [songwriter] Ali Tamposi after we got into business with her in 2017.
She had already written big songs, like It Ain’t Me for Kygo and Selena Gomez, but this was really the start of us working in earnest together, and the beginning of what I consider to be one of the longest, but also one of the most meaningful professional relationships of my life. And one that is now a personal relationship; Ali will always be in my life one way or another.
Ali knows how to collaborate. She listens. She knows how to evolve and shift herself in the studio. Ali understands how to understand an artist, how to listen to the story that the artist wants to tell and then deliver – sonically, melodically, lyrically, emotionally.
Those songs [Havana and Señorita] moved her career to another level. Ali has staying power. She is in it for the long haul, she’s shown that already.
Hand-in-hand with these songs being a pivotal moment for Ali, it was also a turning point for us as a company. It put us literally and figuratively on the charts.
We were, by and large, a catalog business before then, and all of a sudden, to be thrust into the mainstream on market share charts was incredible.
But also to have the client service and the creative service to nurture her and move in lockstep with her was an honor. So those songs, they mean something to me professionally – but I also love them.
7) Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now (1969)
Our relationship with Joni is such an important and treasured one.
This particular song was an early career-defining moment for her, and I have many memories of it having different meanings for me at different times in my life.
It also goes without saying that Joni and her entire body of work has meant so much to me for so long – being a musician, moving to Canada in the 1980s and just observing and learning about the craft of songwriting through her.
And now, having learned so much more, you really understand the depth of her talent, which for me is truly unparalleled.
I went to an event recently at the New York Phil where Sutton Foster performed A Case Of You. What really struck me was just how contemporary Joni’s music is. How it retains its modernity, how it retains its relevance – sonically and lyrically. You hear something new, or you realize something new, every time.
It has been an incredible three years for us, because Joni has performed more in that time than in the previous seven or eight years, even more. And the new generations of fans who are getting to discover her magic through these performances is amazing to witness.
She received the MusiCares Person of the Year award in 2022, which was such an extraordinary evening. It is an honor to be trusted as her administrator during this special time in her career.
At Sony Music Publishing (SMP), we believe every voice matters. We are the #1 global music publisher, advancing the artistry of the world’s greatest songwriters and composers for over 25 years. We keep songwriters at the forefront of everything we do, and design our suite of services to amplify opportunities, build connections, and defend their rights. Our roster benefits from an international team committed to providing support at every career stage. From classic catalogues to contemporary hitmakers, history is always being written. We are a part of the Sony family of global companies. Learn more about SMP here.Music Business Worldwide
For days, Imtiyaz Ali had been anxiously awaiting the findings of a preliminary report into last month’s Air India crash that killed his brother, sister-in-law, and their two young children.
When the report was finally released early on Saturday in India, he read it carefully – only to be disappointed by what he said “reads like a product description”.
“Other than the pilots’ final conversation, there’s nothing in it that really points to what caused the crash.”
He hopes more details will be made public in the months to come.
“This matters to us,” Ali said. “We want to know exactly what happened. It won’t change anything for us now, we continue grieving – just as we have since that day. But at least we’ll have some answers.”
Javid and Maryam Ali with their children Zayn and Amani, who died in the crash
The London-bound Air India flight 171 crashed into a suburban neighbourhood in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad shortly after take-off on 12 June, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.
A preliminary investigative report released on Saturday in India said fuel to the engines of the plane cut off just seconds after take-off. The circumstances around how or why that happened remain unclear.
The report said that in recovered cockpit voice recordings, one of the pilots can be heard asking “why did you cut off?” – to which the other pilot replied he “did not do so”.
A final report into the crash is expected in 12 months.
Shweta Parihar, 41, also wants answers. Her husband, Abhinav Parishar, 43, was on his way back to London. He was meant to fly later in the month but decided to come home early and ended up on the ill-fated flight.
She laments that no investigation will ever bring her husband back.
“For those of us that have lost loved ones, we’ve lost them, they are not coming back,” she said.
“What will they do in the investigation, tell us how it happened? The life of how many people, 250 passengers, what will they say, sorry? Everything is done, everything is finished.”
Parihar becomes emotional when she talks about the impact of the loss on her 11-year-old son Vihaan.
“He misses his dad badly,” she said tearfully. Vihaan tells her that he won’t fly Air India ever again.
Abhinav and Shweta Parihar with their son Vihaan
Badasab Syed, 59, lost his brother, sister-in-law, and their two children in the crash.
He was hoping for answers from the preliminary report, but after watching the news, said he was left with more questions.
“The report mentions the pilots discussing who turned off fuel and a possible issue with the fuel control switch. We don’t know, what does that mean? Was this avoidable?”
Inayat and Nafeesa Syed pictured with their son and daughter
Badasab Syed says his younger brother, Inayat Syed, 49 was the heart of the family. Losing him, his wife and children, has shattered the entire family. The grief has been especially difficult on his 83-year-old mother, Bibi Sab.
“Losing her son and grandchildren has made her weak. I think she is not able to even tell us how she feels,” he said.
