A lone passenger survived the fiery crash of an Air India passenger plane in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad that killed more than 260 people bound for London and others on the ground, in the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade, officials said.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, with 242 people on board, was headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital, and crashed into a medical college hostel during lunch hour shortly after takeoff, sending a massive fireball into the sky.
The death toll includes medical students who were in the hostel when the plane hit the building, said Vidhi Chaudhary, a top state police officer in the northwestern city. "Most of the bodies have been charred beyond recognition," Chaudhary said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Kanan Desai told reporters that "265 bodies have reached the hospital." That suggests that at least 24 people died when the jet ploughed into the hostel – and that the toll may rise further as more bodies are located.
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah confirmed that a single passenger survived the crash and said he met him at the hospital. A doctor said he had examined the survivor, whom he identified as Vishwashkumar Ramesh.
"He was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body," Dr. Dhaval Gameti told The Associated Press (AP). "But he seems to be out of danger."
Ramesh, who was in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, according to Chaudhary, told Indian media how he had heard a loud noise shortly after take-off.
"Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed," the 40-year-old told the Hindustan Times.
"It all happened so quickly," he told the paper from his hospital bed.
"When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me," he said. "Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital."
He said that his brother, Ajay, was seated in a different row on the plane. "He was travelling with me and I can't find him anymore. Please help me find him," he said.
Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane crashed and burst into flames near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state.
Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water.
Charred bodies lay on the ground and parts of the fuselage were scattered around the site. Indian army teams were assisting civil authorities to clear debris and help treat the injured.
A video on social media showed the jet slowly descending as if it were landing. As soon as it disappeared out of view behind rows of houses, a giant fireball filled the sky.
At the crash site, the tail cone of the aircraft with damaged stabilizer fins still attached to it was lodged near the top of one of the buildings.
In a social media post, Modi called the crash "heartbreaking beyond words" and said "my thoughts are with everyone affected."
Sambit Patra, a lawmaker from Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said Gujarat's former chief minister, Vijay Rupani, was among the dead.
Relatives had been asked to give DNA samples to identify the dead, state health secretary Dhananjay Dwivedi told reporters.
Divyansh Singh, vice president of the Federation of All India Medical Association, said at least five students from the medical college were killed on the ground and 50 others were injured. Singh said some of them were in critical condition and many people are "feared buried in the debris."
Air India said passengers included 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian. The included 217 adults, 11 children and two infants, a source told Reuters.
"My sister-in-law was going to London. Within an hour, I got news that the plane had crashed," Poonam Patel, a relative of one of the passengers, told news agency ANI at the government hospital in Ahmedabad.
Ramila, the mother of a student at the medical college, told ANI her son had gone to the hostel for his lunch break when the plane crashed. "My son is safe, and I have spoken to him. He jumped from the second floor, so he suffered some injuries," she said.
The Boeing 787-8 crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. (08:08 GMT), said Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation.
This is the first crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. Boeing said it was "working to gather more information."
India's Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said that a formal investigation has been initiated by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
"The government is constituting a high-level committee comprising experts from multiple disciplines to examine the matter in detail," he added.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said that he has spoken with the Air India chairman to offer full support and a team stands ready to support the investigation. The airline CEO, Campbell Wilson, said the investigation would take time and expressed "deep sorrow" about the incident.
U.S. aerospace safety consultant Anthony Brickhouse said one problematic sign from videos of the aircraft was that the landing gear was down at a phase of flight when it would typically be up.
“If you didn't know what was happening, you would think that plane was on approach to a runway,” Brickhouse said.
India's aviation regulatory body said the aircraft gave a mayday call, signalling an emergency, but then did not respond to the calls made by the airport traffic control.
Aircraft engine-maker GE Aerospace said that it would put a team together to go to India and analyse cockpit data, India's CNBC TV18 reported.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it would lead a team of U.S. investigators travelling to India to help in the investigation.
Aviation consultant John M. Cox, the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, told the AP from Los Angeles that while the first images of the crash were poor, it appeared the aircraft had its nose up and was not climbing, which is one of the things that investigators would look at.
"At this point, it’s very, very, very early; we don't know a whole lot," he said. "But the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring – the parameters on the flight data recorder are in the thousands – so once we get that recorder, they'll be able to know pretty quickly what happened."
The wide-body, twin-engine aircraft was introduced in 2009, and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the Flightradar24 website.
The plane that crashed on Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in January 2014, Flightradar24 said.
Air India's chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said that at the moment "our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families."
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the crash "devastating" and British Cabinet minister Lucy Powell said the government will provide "all the support that it can" to those affected by the crash.
"This is an unfolding story, and it will undoubtedly be causing a huge amount of worry and concern to the many, many families and communities here and those waiting for the arrival of their loved ones," she told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
"We send our deepest sympathy and thoughts to all those families, and the government will provide all the support that it can with those in India and those in this country as well," she added.
Britain has very close ties with India. There were nearly 1.9 million people in the country of Indian descent, according to the 2021 U.K. census.
Condolences also poured in from King Charles III, who said he and his wife, Queen Camilla, were "desperately shocked" by the crash.
"Our special prayers and deepest possible sympathy are with the families and friends of all those affected by this appallingly tragic incident across so many nations," he said in a statement.
Ahmedabad Airport, which suspended all flight operations after the crash, said it was operational again but with limited flights. The airport is operated by India's Adani Group conglomerate.
The last fatal plane crash in India, the world's third largest aviation market and its fastest growing, was in 2020 and involved Air India Express, the airline's low-cost arm.
The airline's Boeing-737 overshot a "table-top" runway in southern India, skidded and plunged into a valley, crashing nose-first into the ground and killing 21 people.
The formerly state-owned Air India was taken over by Indian conglomerate Tata Group in 2022, and merged with Vistara – a joint venture between the group and Singapore Airlines – in 2024.
The worst air disaster in India was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhstan Airlines Flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes.
The crash comes days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers.
Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max 8, plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 passengers and crew members.
Boeing's shares fell 5% on Thursday as the crash posed a major setback for the planemaker as its new CEO looks to rebuild trust following a series of safety and production challenges.
