LONDON (AP) — King Charles III and different members of the royal household in uniform wore black armbands and noticed a second of silence throughout his annual birthday parade Saturday because the monarch commemorated those that died on this week’s Air India airplane crash.
Charles requested the symbolic strikes “as a mark of respect for the lives lost, the families in mourning and all the communities affected by this awful tragedy,” Buckingham Palace mentioned.
An Air India flight from the northwestern metropolis of Ahmedabad to London crashed shortly after takeoff on Thursday, killing 241 folks on board and at the least 29 on the bottom. The airplane was carrying 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. One man survived.
Along with being Britain’s head of state, Charles is the top of the Commonwealth, a corporation of impartial states that features India and Canada.
Max Mumby/Indigo through Getty Pictures
The monarch’s annual birthday parade, often called Trooping the Color, is a historic ceremony full of pageantry and army bands during which the king evaluations his troops on Horse Guards Parade adjoining to St. James’ Park in central London.
The army ceremony dates again to a time when flags of the battalion, often called colors, had been “trooped,″ or proven, to troopers within the ranks so they might acknowledge them.
Charles, carrying a scarlet army uniform, traveled to Horse Guards Parade in an open-topped, horse-drawn carriage accompanied by Queen Camilla.
Prince William and different uniformed members of the royal household rode behind the king on horseback, adopted by Kate, the princess of Wales, and her three kids in one other open-topped carriage.
The festivities featured 1,338 troopers, together with 244 musicians, who paraded previous the king following the second of silence for these affected by the Air India catastrophe.
The royal household then returned to Buckingham Palace, the place they appeared on the balcony to wave to the group and watch a flyover of army plane.
The finale of the flyover was an look by the Royal Air Drive aerobatic show group, often called the Pink Arrows, which for the primary time used a mix of sustainable aviation gasoline to energy their plane and generate their signature crimson, white and blue smoke trails.
