(Al Jazeera Media Network) An Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane with at least 242 people on board crashed in a densely populated residential area close to an airport on the edge of India’s western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday morning.
Later on Thursday, the local police chief in Ahmedabad said at least 204 bodies had been recovered. Local rescue workers said they had retrieved between 30 and 35 bodies from a building hit by the aircraft, Reuters reported.
ANI, India’s premier news agency, reported that there was one survivor and quoted Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik. “The police found one survivor in seat 11A… One survivor has been found in the hospital and is under treatment. Cannot say anything about the number of deaths yet. The death toll may increase as the flight crashed in a residential area.”
Flight AI171 was headed to London Gatwick Airport on Thursday where it was due to land at 6:25pm local time (17:25 GMT).
“Of these [on board], 169 are Indian nationals, 53 are British nationals, 1 Canadian national and 7 Portuguese nationals,” Air India said in a statement. The airline described the incident as “a tragic accident”.
“Many people” have died in the crash, the country’s health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda wrote in a post on X.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X: “The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us. It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it.
“Have been in touch with ministers and authorities who are working to assist those affected.”
This incident is the latest in a series of serious and fatal events in the civil aviation industry this year, including a midair collision in Washington in January between a military helicopter and an aircraft.
The Air India plane crashed in a residential area called Meghani Nagar, Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, head of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, told The Associated Press.
The city of between 7 and 8 million people is in Prime Minister Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Modi has directed the Ministry of Civil Aviation to take “all possible action” to assist at the crash site.
There is a large Gujarat population in Great Britain, and the Ahmedabad-London route is a popular one.
According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, the plane’s final signal was received just seconds after takeoff at 1:38 pm local time (08:08 GMT). It had reached an altitude of 190 metres before crashing back to the ground outside the airport in a residential area on the outskirts of the city.
The plane issued a mayday alert to air traffic control before all communications from the aircraft ceased.
Footage shared on social media of the crash site showed debris on fire, with huge plumes of thick, black smoke rising into the sky near the airport.
They also showed people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.
India’s CNN News-18 TV channels said the plane crashed on top of the dining area of state-run B.J. Medical College hostel, killing many medical students. It showed a visual of a portion of the aircraft perched atop the building.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/12/catastrophic-air-india-plane-crash-near-ahmedabad-what-we-know
