Air India flight headed to London crashes after takeoff

AHMEDABAD, India — An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed into a medical college after takeoff Thursday in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad, officials said, in one of India's worst airline disasters in decades. At least one person survived the crash, a doctor with the local hospital told the news agency Press Trust of India. The Associated Press could not independently verify the information. 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. The AP was able to verify the video by matching up the flight path of the plane from the runway with the crash site and the nearby residential area. 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." City police chief G.S. Malik told the AP that the dead could include both passengers and those on the ground. "Exact figures on casualties are being ascertained," he said. Sambit Patra, a lawmaker from Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said Gujarat's former chief minister, Vijay Rupani, was among the dead. 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 the flight bound for London Gatwick Airport was carrying 242 passengers and crew, with 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian aboard. 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), Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told AP. The first crash of a Boeing 787 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 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. 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. Air India's chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said that at the moment "our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families." "Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event," he said. UK promises support 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. Previous air disasters in India The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020, when an Air India Express Boeing-737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people. 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. Shares of Boeing Co. tumbled nearly 9% before trading opened in the U.S.