India Air disaster: More than 240 dead in nation’s deadliest plane crash in decades

An Air India flight bound for London crashed shortly after taking off Thursday from the western city of Ahmedabad, the country’s deadliest air disaster in nearly three decades.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, carrying 242 passengers and crew members, went down at around 1.30pm local time, just after departing from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in the state of Gujarat.

Verified CCTV footage from the runway showed the plane ascending, then levelling off, then plummeting to earth - sending clouds of fire into the sky - all in under a minute.

The aircraft slammed into a dormitory at B.J. Medical College in the dense Meghani Nagar neighbourhood, just as medical students were sitting down to lunch, witnesses said.

“This is an accident, and nobody can stop accidents,” Home Minister Amit Shah said upon arriving in Ahmedabad.

The cause of the crash was not clear. Also initially unclear was the full death toll. Officials said initially that all those aboard the flight were believed to be dead.

Later, it emerged one passenger had miraculously survived. Vishwash Kumar was able to walk away from the crash and was recovering from his injuries at a local hospital, where he told the Hindustan Times there was a loud noise 30 seconds into the flight.

“It all happened so quickly,” he told the paper. “I was scared. I stood up and ran.”

More than two dozen people on the ground were also killed. Firefighters navigated a wasteland of charred vehicles, mangled metal and scorched trees. The fuselage of the plane had torn through the upper floors of the dormitory. First responders hauled hoses across smouldering debris as bystanders placed bodies onto stretchers and covered them in white sheets.

“I have never seen this many dead bodies in my life,” said Mahesh Desai, a 39-year-old local who rushed to help. “It was all on fire when I came to the site.”

“The whole nation is crying,” said Musharaf Ali Gulzar, a civil defence official at the scene.

At least 269 bodies had been brought to the city’s Civil Lines hospital, senior police official Vishaka Dabral told The Washington Post late Thursday.

Outside the hospital, the gates to enter the postmortem room were filled with family members desperate for news of their loved ones. Nearby, Samir Sheikh, 48, sat in a daze; his son Irfan was a member of the flight’s cabin crew.

“I can’t say anything,” Mr Sheikh said.

In a converted auditorium, dozens of relatives sat on benches, waiting to provide DNA samples to confirm what they already knew. Vijay Patel, 49, learned about the crash on WhatsApp and rushed to the hospital. Just hours earlier, he remembered, he had been eating samosas with his uncle, 62-year-old Ashok Lallu Bhai Patel, who was excited to visit his son in London. Now, all he can think about is the sight of the charred bodies.

“I can’t bear this pain,” Mr Patel said.

The plane was carrying 169 Indians, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian, according to a statement from Air India. “We are actively working with the authorities on all emergency response efforts,” Campbell Wilson, the CEO of Air India, said in a video online. Later, the company released a statement saying had it confirmed 241 fatalities.

It was the first crash involving Boeing’s 787, a fuel-efficient jet introduced by the company in 2009 and dubbed the Dreamliner. The jet that crashed was delivered to Air India in early 2014; it had taken off and landed more than 8,000 times, according to Cirium, a data analytics firm.

One of its most most recent flights included a flight from Delhi to Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport, where it landed at 9.08pm on Sunday.

There was not enough evidence yet to determine what might have caused the crash, aviation experts cautioned Thursday, but some said videos of the jet appeared to show its landing gear down and flaps up - an unusual configuration after take off.

“It is plausible that the airplane could not climb because the flaps weren’t in the proper position and the landing gear was down,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a former Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board analyst. It was too soon to say whether pilots made an error, the plane suffered a mechanical problem or another issue arose, he added.

In the chaos, Neeta Parikh, 45, was frantically looking for her aunt and daughter, who worked as cooks in the area. Asodia Som, a medical student from a nearby college, said one of his friends was killed, and as many as 20 people were in the dining hall when the plane hit.

Television footage showed students’ mattresses and shoes strewn outside the building; the tail of the plane sat near half-eaten plates of food.

Union Minister C.R. Patil said Vijay Rupani, Gujarat’s former chief minister, was among those killed in the crash. “It is a huge loss to the BJP family,” Mr Rupani said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party.

Mr Modi called the incident “heartbreaking beyond words.” “In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it,” he said on X.

Global leaders, including those from Russia, Britain, France and Pakistan, offered their condolences. British cabinet minister Lucy Powell told the House of Commons that the government would “provide all the support that it can with those in India and those in this country as well.” UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said a crisis coordination team had been established between New Delhi and London.

Officials at Gatwick Airport, where the flight was due to land, said they were setting up a reception centre for relatives.

There are nearly 1.9 million people of Indian origin in the UK, according to the 2021 census.

British nationals Akeel Nanabawa, his wife, Hannaa, and their 3-year-old daughter, Sara, had flown to Gujarat this month to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha with Mr Akeel’s parents, whom they had not seen in a year.

His parents, Abdullah Nanabawa and Shaheen Nanabawa, found out from news reports that their son’s flight home had crashed. “They are inconsolable; they have not stopped crying,” said Mohammed Rizwan Lightwala, a family friend.

President Donald Trump called the crash “terrible” and “horrific” in remarks at the White House. “I let them know that anything we can do, we’ll be over there immediately,” he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on X it would lead a team of US investigators assisting Indian authorities with their investigation.

Analysts said the inquiry is likely to focus on the actions of the pilots, the airline, maintenance of the jet and Boeing - which has struggled for years to fully recover from two air disasters involving a smaller jet, the 737 Max, in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes, linked to a design flaw, killed a combined 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Until Thursday, more than 1,100 Dreamliners in service globally had carried 1 billion passengers, according to the company, with no fatal crashes.

Major aviation disasters are rare in India, though Air India, the country’s former national carrier, has been involved in several deadly incidents.

In 2020, a flight operated by Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India, skidded off a runway during a heavy downpour in southern India and broke into pieces, killing 21. In 2010, 158 people died when an Air India Express plane crashed upon landing in Mangalore, western India. In 1978, 213 people perished on Flight 855, which fell into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Mumbai.

In 1996, in India’s deadliest aviation disaster, a Saudia flight collided with a Kazakhstan Airlines plane in the skies west of New Delhi, killing nearly 350 people.

Air India was purchased by the Tata Group conglomerate in 2022 after years of heavy financial losses. Mr Wilson, a former Singapore Airlines executive, embarked on a five-year corporate restructuring, including IT systems, maintenance practices and the fleet.

“We’ve taken delivery of a new aircraft about once every six days (for) the last two years,” Mr Wilson said earlier this month at the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association, an aviation trade group.

At a recently opened training centre in Gurgaon, south of New Delhi, a prominent display just past the reception desk highlights Air India’s past crashes, encouraging staff members to remember and learn from them. Pieces of wreckage are displayed around the room: a discoloured lavatory door decorated with pale blue flowers, warped passenger seats still covered in mud.

“No words can adequately express the grief we feel at this moment,” Tata Group chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said in a statement Thursday, adding that the company would provide compensation to the families of the victims.

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