• Deadly crash: At least 290 people are dead after a passenger plane crashed on departure at an airport in Ahmedabad, India, health officials said. The plane, en route to London, hit a hostel for doctors when it crashed, and images show its tail protruding from the building. The death toll includes people on the plane and others on the ground, police said.

• Sole survivor: A total of 241 of the 242 people aboard the Air India flight were killed in the crash, the airline said. A single British national passenger survived.

• Boeing’s response: The plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, according to Flightradar24. It’s the first major incident involving the aircraft. Boeing said it is ready to support Air India.

• Safety record: Air India has seen a few rare but high-profile plane crashes through the years. Previous accidents have spurred Indian authorities to improve its safety and infrastructure, but challenges remain.

At least 290 people have been killed in Air India crash, health official says

At least 290 people have died after an Air India plane crashed shortly after take off from Ahmedabad airport in India on Thursday, a senior doctor at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where a majority of the dead and injured people were taken, told CNN.

Among those killed were passengers on the flight, including some minors, local residents, and people who were inside the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel when the plane crashed into it.

The doctor added that the death toll is likely to rise.

Earlier Thursday, Swapnil Bhalodia of the Indian Medical Association Medical Students Network said at least three medical students had died in the crash and another 30 others were injured.

The plane was headed for London’s Gatwick airport and was carrying Indian, British, Canadian and Portuguese nationals.

An Air India flight carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed shortly after takeoff. Here’s what we know

An Air India flight en route to London carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed shortly after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad in India’s Guajarat state earlier today.

Here’s what we know so far about the crash:

Timeline: According to aviation tracker Flightradar24, Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, departed from Ahmedabad International airport at 1:38 p.m. local time (4:08 a.m. ET) with a destination of London Gatwick Airport. The aircraft’s signal was lost less than a minute later, at an altitude of 625 feet.

Casualties: At least 290 people are dead, a senior doctor at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital told CNN. Among those killed were passengers on the flight, including some minors, local residents, and people who were inside the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel when the plane crashed into it. So far, there is only one reported survivor among those who were on board the flight, according to local police. Earlier, Air India’s CEO Campbell Wilson said in a social media video message that injured passengers were taken to a local hospitals and a “special team of caregivers from Air India is on their way to Ahmedabad to provide additional support.”

In the surrounding area: Officials said the bulk of the plane had crashed into a hostel housing doctors working in a local hospital. The Federation of All India Medical Association said between 50 and 60 students have been admitted to local hospitals after the flight crashed into the hostel at the BJ Medical College and Hospital. Some residents and their relatives are said to be missing, while one resident’s wife has been found dead, according to a statement from the group.

Who was onboard? Wilson said that 230 passengers boarded the flight that was manned by 12 crew members. He confirmed 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian national were on board.

Investigation: India’s civil aviation authorities would be expected to take the lead, according to CNN’s Richard Quest, but “parties to the investigation” would also likely include the US, where the aircraft is manufactured, and the UK, the destination country. The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it will be leading a team that is heading to India to assist local authorities’ probe into the crash. The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has also formally offered its assistance to India’s authorities following the crash.

Boeing’s response: Boeing said it is in contact with the airline. “Our thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders and all affected,” it added in an X post. This is the latest in a string of incidents for the plane manufacturer over the past few years.

Support for victims: Tata Group, the owner of Air India and one of India’s largest conglomerates, has said it will provide ₹1 crore ($116,868) to the families of each person who has lost their life, the company announced in a post on X.

This post has been updated with the latest reporting on the crash and casualties.

India will lead the crash investigation, but these other parties will likely be involved, too

Investigators from all over the world will be involved in a probe to figure out what went wrong in the case of a commercial plane that crashed shortly after takeoff in India on Thursday, one expert said.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was carrying 242 people when it departed from Ahmedabad International airport with a destination of London Gatwick Airport.

Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the US Department of Transportation, said India will be the lead investigator, but there are well-established procedures that dictate how other countries can support.

“Through lots of experience in the past and by treaties and operation of law, how the investigation in international aircraft works is very well established,” she told CNN today.

The plane was heading to London, so the United Kingdom will participate in the investigation, she said, as well as other countries who had nationals on the plane. Boeing and the companies who manufactured the electronics and control systems in the aircraft will also likely be involved, according to Schiavo.

“So there will be just a wealth of experience and abilities” working to figure out what happened, she said.

Before the plane crashed, pilots gave a Mayday call to air traffic control shortly after takeoff, according to India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Investigators will be working to recover the black boxes, or flight recorders, to learn more about what happened, Schiavo said.

 

“India is an aviation nation and very experienced, and they will have experts that could do that,” Schiavo said, referring to retrieving the information from those recorders.

Air India Dreamliner crashes into Ahmedabad college hostel, kills over 240

AHMEDABAD, India, June 12 (Reuters) – More than 240 people were killed when an Air India plane bound for London crashed moments after taking off from the city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, authorities said, in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, with 242 people on board, which was headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital, had only one survivor after it crashed onto a medical college hostel during lunch hour.

The sole survivor is a British national of Indian origin and is being treated in a hospital, the airline confirmed. The man told Indian media how he had heard a loud noise shortly after Flight AI171 took off.
“We are still verifying the number of dead, including those killed in the building where the plane crashed,” Vidhi Chaudhary, a top state police officer, told Reuters.
She said the death toll was more than 240, revising down a previous toll of 294 as it included body parts that had been double counted. It was not immediately clear how many of the dead had been on the aircraft or on the ground.

 

The only known surviving passenger was in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, Chaudhary said, adding that there could be more survivors in hospital.

“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed,” 40-year-old Ramesh Viswashkumar told the Hindustan Times, which showed a boarding pass for seat 11A in that name online.

“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.

Ahmedabad police chief G.S. Malik said the bodies recovered could include both passengers and people killed on the ground. The dead included Vijay Rupani, the former chief minister of Gujarat state, of which Ahmedabad is the main city.

Relatives have been asked to give DNA samples to identify the dead, state health secretary Dhananjay Dwivedi said.

Parts of the plane’s fuselage were scattered around the smouldering building into which it crashed. The tail of the plane was stuck on top of the building.

The passengers included 217 adults, 11 children and two infants, a source told Reuters. Air India said 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian.

It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, a wide-body airliner that began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. The plane that crashed on Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in January 2014, Flightradar24 said.

CRASH JUST AFTER TAKE-OFF

CCTV footage showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge fireball could be seen rising into the sky from beyond the houses.

“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.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad Airport, the aircraft departed at 1:39 p.m. (0809 GMT). It made a Mayday call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter there was no response from the aircraft.

Item 1 of 14 A person walks past debris at the crash site after an Air India aircraft, bound for London’s Gatwick Airport, crashed during take-off from an airport in Ahmedabad, India June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

[1/14]A person walks past debris at the crash site after an Air India aircraft, bound for London’s Gatwick Airport, crashed during take-off from an airport in Ahmedabad, India June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

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.

Indian 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 in a note to employees that was seen by Reuters that he and the head of Boeing’s commercial airplane division had cancelled plans to attend next week’s Paris Air Show, the industry’s biggest event of the year.

Before Thursday’s crash, Ortberg was heading to Paris having made considerable progress on his efforts to rebuild trust in the company following multiple production and safety crises in recent years.

Now, a team of Boeing experts is ready to go to India to help investigators there, he said.

Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the investigation would take time and expressed “deep sorrow” about the incident.

Boeing’s (BA.N), opens new tab shares fell 5% in the crash’s wake.

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. transportation secretary said the Federal Aviation Administration was working with Boeing and GE in the investigation.

Britain was also working with Indian authorities to establish the facts around the crash and to provide support to those involved, the country’s foreign office said.

“The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. “It is heartbreaking beyond words.” Gujarat is Modi’s home state.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said images of the crash were “devastating”. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said King Charles was also being kept updated.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the crash “terrible”.

INDIA’S FIRST CRASH SINCE 2020

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.

($1 = 85.5420 Indian rupees)

Reporting by Sumit Khanna and Mahezabin Saiyed in Ahmedabad, Sakshi Dayal, Tanvi Mehta, Aditi Shah, Aditya Kalra, Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Krishna Das, Shivam Patel in New Delhi, Shivani Tanna, Surbhi Misra and Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Writing by YP Rajesh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Alex Richardson, Alison Williams and Sandra Maler

At least one passenger survived the Air India crash, police say

 

At least one passenger on board Air India Flight 171 to London Gatwick survived, local police said.

According to Reuters, senior police officer Vidhi Chaudhary said the man had been in seat 11A and added that there may be a few more survivors in the hospital.

The Hindustan Times named the survivor as a British national, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, and said he was receiving treatment. What appears to be a copy of the flight manifest, shared by news agency IANS, lists Vishwash Kumar Ramesh as having been assigned seat 11A and boarded.

The Hindustan Times said it spoke to Ramesh in a local hospital, and quoted him as saying: “Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.”

Ramesh told the Hindustan Times that he had been visiting family and was returning to the UK with his brother, who had been sitting in a different row. He didn’t know if his brother had survived, he said.

US President Trump pledges support in wake of India plane crash

 

 

US President Donald Trump expressed concern about the fatal plane crash in India on Thursday and said he has pledged US support if needed in its aftermath.

A Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane en route to London crashed on departure at an airport in India’s western city of Ahmedabad, with more than 200 people feared dead.

Trump said he “gave them a couple of pointers” but declined to share what pointers he offered.

Post Views: 93

Step into a world dedicated entirely to man's best friend - dogs. Our website is a treasure trove of heartwarming news, touching stories, and inspiring narratives centered around these incredible creatures. We invite you to join us in spreading the joy. Share our posts, stories, and articles with your friends, extending the warmth and inspiration to every corner.With a simple click, you can be part of this movement.