Virginia Carretero kissed her niece and nephew goodbye as they entered security at Madrid’s Barajas airport, clutching tickets for seats 6A and B aboard Spanair flight JK5022. In a few hours, they would be safely home in Gran Canaria, where their parents were waiting to collect them following a holiday on the Spanish mainland.

A few hours later, she heard the news. Racing back to the airport, she waited anxiously among other tearful relatives, pacing up and down and asking any official she could see for the whereabouts of Maria, 16, and Roberto, 6.

Finally, at 6pm, the call came. Her young nephew had been admitted to the Ramon y Cajal hospital with head injuries and puncture wounds to the face. Maria was nowhere to be found.

“My six-year-old nephew has been saved, but we don’t know anything about his sister, who was travelling next to him,” a distraught Ms Carretero said.

“Perhaps she’s lost her memory and can’t say her name in the hospital. Hopefully.”

Of the 172 people aboard the fateful flight, just 19 were pulled from the wreckage alive. Roberto was the youngest of three child survivors, up to 19 others having perished in the flames which engulfed the aircraft seconds after take-off. 17 of the children killed were said to have been between the ages of 2 and 12.

A boy of eight, Alfredo Acosta Mendiola, was today being treated for a broken leg at Hospital Niño Jesús (Baby Jesus) while his mother, 45-year-old Gregoria Mendiola Rodriguez, lay in a coma, fighting for her life. His father, Colombian-born Alfredo Acosta Sierra, 60, died in the crash, his body among the scores laid out at a makeshift morgue at the city’s main convention centre. Today, a permanent stream of hearses, medical vehicles and cars jammed the roads to and from the centre as devastated relatives came to identify their loved ones, a task made almost impossible by the charred condition of the corpses.

A rescue worker called Maria told how Alfredo was crying out for his parents as he was rushed to hospital.

“He was very together, complaining about some pain, but what most worried him was finding his parents.”

The family had lived in the village of Torralba de Calatrava, in the province of Ciudad Real, 130 miles south of Madrid, for three years. They were flying to the Canary Islands for a short holiday.

A spokeswoman for the mayor in the family’s home village said that the village had been “devastated” by news of the tragedy. “Alfredo is out of danger,” she said, adding “We are all praying that Gregoria will pull through.”

An 11-year-old girl named Maria was in a serious but stable condition at La Paz hospital, suffering from an open fracture to her femur. The same rescue worker, who attended to her at the scene, said she too asked repeatedly for her mother, named as Amaya. She is not thought to be among the survivors.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found