Plane with 242 crashes in India; one passenger survives

An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed on Thursday afternoon shortly after takeoff from an airport in western India, and officials said there was only one known survivor.

Flight AI171 departed from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the state of Gujarat, at 1:38 pm and was due to arrive at Gatwick Airport in London at 6:25 pm local time.

Video footage on Indian news channels showed the plane crashing minutes after takeoff into a populated area right outside the airport. The airline said the flight was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. The passengers comprised 169 Indian nationals, 53 British citizens, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian citizen, it said.

Indian media reports said the plane — a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — crashed on top of a medical college hostel. Visuals showed the tail cone of the plane, with damaged stabilizer fins still attached, lodged atop a building. Reports said at least five medical students were killed and around 50 injured.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is from Gujarat, said he was stunned and saddened by the tragedy. "It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it," he said in a message posted on social media.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the scenes of the crash devastating. "I am being kept updated as the situation develops, and my thoughts are with the passengers and their families," he wrote on social media.

The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engine plane, which entered commercial service in 2011.This is the first crash ever involving this aircraft model, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

Boeing's shares tumbled in premarket trading on Thursday. The company said in a statement it stands ready to support Air India and is in contact with the airline. "Our thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders and all affected," it said.

Aviation safety consultant John M. Cox said one of the questions investigators should be asking is whether the Air India plane was properly configured for flight.

While he stressed it was too early to draw conclusions, Cox, who is the CEO of Safety Operating Systems in Washington, DC, said that visuals show the airplane continuing to sink. "That says it is not making enough lift," he said, adding that the slats and flaps should be positioned in a way that the wing makes more lift at lower speed.

"It doesn't look like the trailing edge flaps are in the position I would have expected them to be," he said. "But I'm very cautious as the image quality is not good enough to make a conclusion."

The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020, when an Air India Express Boeing 737 skidded off a hilltop runway in the southern state of Kerala, killing 21 people. The worst air disaster in India was on Nov 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines plane collided midair with a Kazakhstan Airlines aircraft near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes.