One passenger survived the crash of an Air India plane bound for London that killed at least 240 people Thursday in Ahmedabad, one of India's worst airline disasters in decades, officials said.
The death toll includes medical students who were in a college hostel when the plane hit the building shortly after takeoff, said Vidhi Chaudhary, a top state police officer in the northwestern city.
“Most of the bodies have been charred beyond recognition,” she said.
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. “But he seems to be out of danger.”
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 Associated Press 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 a 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.
