Heidi Moran found out that two of her friends had been killed on Air India Flight AI171 from an Instagram message request.

Ms. Moran helps run an annual LGBTQ+ festival in Ramsgate, a seaside town on England’s southern coast. Around lunchtime on Thursday, a message to Ramsgate Pride appeared from an account she didn’t recognize, based in India, saying that the names of Jamie and Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek were on the flight manifest for the plane that had crashed that day in Ahmedabad.

“We saw that they’re supposed to be at the event on Saturday, but we’ve got the manifest and sadly they were on board. They’ve passed away,” the message read.

“I didn’t really believe it, so I messaged Jamie and tried to call him,” Ms. Moran said. “But obviously I couldn’t get through, and it was true. It was surreal.”

Jamie, 45, and Fiongal, 39, had married in 2022 and ran a wellness company together. They had been visiting India for a spiritual retreat and were returning home to help organize events on Saturday at Ramsgate Pride.

The couple are two of the 52 British victims of the aviation disaster, which claimed the lives of 241 people who were flying to London’s Gatwick Airport. Dozens more were killed when the plane hit a dining hall for medical students. As the process of recovering and identifying bodies continues, bereaved relatives are searching for answers. For many family members in Britain — more than 4,000 miles from the crash site — the imperative has been to travel as quickly as possible to India.