An Air India flight with 242 people on board, including 12 crew members, bound for London, crashed shortly after takeoff in the city of Ahmedabad, northwest India, today. Indian Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nada said many people were killed but provided no further information. Authorities say one passenger survived the accident.
Ahmedabad police commissioner G.S. Malik confirmed in a statement to NPR that 204 bodies had been recovered. As the plane crashed in a residential area of the city, residents may be among the dead. A government official confirmed that Vijay Rupani, former head of the government of the state of Gujarat, India, died in the accident.
Malik also confirmed that a male passenger survived the accident and said he was being treated at a local hospital. That passenger is a British national, according to the BBC.
Images released by the Press Trust of India showed the plane falling over a residential neighborhood followed by the sound of an explosion and a fireball. The Press Trust shared images of medical teams rushing victims on stretchers. The plane crashed just five minutes after takeoff, according to Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, who spoke to the Associated Press.
The Boeing 787 was headed to London’s Gatwick Airport. Air India said on X that the flight carried 169 Indian nationals, 53 British, one Canadian, and seven Portuguese. Several videos shared by residents appeared to show charred bodies and body parts at the crash site.
The victims may include people hit after the plane, or parts of it, collided with the canteen of a student dormitory at BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad, according to a hospital official who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the press. She said the hospital was receiving victims. The Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA) said on X that 50 medical students had been admitted to the hospital, at least four were missing, and at least two were in critical condition.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the accident a “tragedy” that has left us “shocked and saddened.”
“It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with all those affected by this,” he wrote on X.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of the Tata Group that operates Air India, said in a statement that flight AI171 was involved in a “tragic incident.” He said the conglomerate was assisting emergency response teams and providing care and support to those affected. The airport from which the flight took off suspended operations.
This is the first crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The aircraft issued a “Mayday” call, signaling an emergency before crashing. A Boeing spokesperson told the Associated Press that the company was aware of the crash reports and “working to gather more information.” The 787 was introduced in 2009 and more than 1,000 are in operation worldwide, according to Boeing.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday morning on X that it will lead a team of U.S. investigators going to India to assist in the accident investigation.
The New York Times reported in April 2024 that the Federal Aviation Administration was investigating claims made by a whistleblower—a Boeing engineer—who alleged that sections of the 787 Dreamliner were improperly fastened and could come apart after thousands of flights. At the time, Boeing told the newspaper it had “determined that this is not an immediate flight safety issue.”
The last major air crash in India was in 2020, when a Boeing 737 veered off the runway at an airport on top of a hill, killing 21 people.
Source: www.npr.org