Air India plane crash claims at least 241 lives as one passenger survives
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which took off from the city of Ahmedabad, in western India, ploughed into a residential area, hitting a hospital complex and medical student hostel.
One passenger survived the disaster - a British national, who was sitting in seat 11A and who later told family he had no idea how he walked away.
It is not yet clear what caused the crash, which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described as "heartbreaking beyond words".
Officials warned the death toll could rise in what was quickly described as one of the deadliest aviation disasters in India's history.
Air India Flight AI171 departed Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 13:39 local time (08:09 GMT), and was due to touch-down at London's Gatwick Airport at 18:25 BST.
There were 230 passengers on board, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese citizens, one Canadian and 12 crew members.
The local police chief told the BBC that 204 bodies had been recovered so far - but it is not known how many of those victims were on the plane or were on the ground.
Images from the scene show debris scattered across a large crash zone, with parts of the aircraft embedded in buildings.
The extraordinary news that one person had survived the disaster quickly made international headlines, as the British national, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, was filmed limping towards an ambulance, with smoke billowing in the background.
British man is only passenger to survive India plane crash
What could caused Air India plane to crash in 30 seconds?
"Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise... it all happened so quickly," he told local media from hospital.
His cousin, Ajay Valgi, said Mr Ramesh called his family to say he was "fine", but he does not know the whereabouts of his brother, also called Ajay, who was on the plane with him.
Thursday's incident was the first fatal crash involving a 787 Dreamliner, first introduced in 2011.
Boeing said in a statement that it "stands ready" to support the investigation, which is being led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
"We are in contact with Air India regarding Flight 171 and stand ready to support them. Our thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders and all affected," the bureau said.
US and British investigators will travel to India, with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) saying it will assist Indian authorities.
India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said the aircraft issued a mayday call seconds after take-off.
It lost contact with air traffic control shortly thereafter, crashing just outside the airport's perimeter.
The crash site lies within a medical campus with 10 specialised centres. The BBC's Sachin Pithva described scenes of chaos, with rescue workers retrieving the remains of those who perished.
Thick smoke was still billowing from the buildings hours after the crash, and passengers' passports were strewn around, he reported.
Gujarat's Additional Chief Secretary for Health confirmed the aircraft struck the students' hostel and staff quarters of Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College and Civil Hospital.
"It crashed into the hostel mess and then bounced off on to one of the hostel buildings," the hospital's dean, Dr Meenkashi Parekh, told the BBC.
The crash happened at lunchtime when many students were in the canteen, she added. Photos show a huge part of the plane stuck in one of the hostel buildings, and a dusty, deserted mess hall with plates of uneaten food still on the tables.
"Most of the students escaped... but the building caught fire and the smoke was extremely thick. So, 10 to 12 students were trapped," the dean said.
She added it was possible that several students had been killed. Officials said dozens were in hospital.
Tata Group, which owns Air India, has said it would give one crore rupee - the equivalent of about £86,000 - to the families of each person who was killed in the crash.
Prime Minister Modi wrote on X: "The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us. It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it."
Both Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said they are being kept updated as the situation develops, while King Charles expressed his "deepest sympathies" to all those affected by the crash.
Starmer confirmed that a UK team had been dispatched to Gujarat to join the investigation as he urged families and friends of anyone affected to contact the Foreign Office.
Additional reporting by Tiffany Wertheimer
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Yahoo
6 hours ago
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Everything we know about the Air India crash points to an uncomfortable truth
With 260 casualties and only one surviving passenger, the Air India 171 crash is one of the deadliest aviation incidents in recent history — and so far it's proving to be one of the most frustratingly opaque. Video of the June 12 incident had previously captured the Boeing 787 taking off successfully from Ahmedabad bound for London, only to rapidly descend, crash into a medical college complex, and explode into flames. The crash killed all but one of the plane's 242 occupants. It also damaged five buildings, killed 19 people on the ground, and injured over 60 more. The weeks that followed saw rampant speculation, AI-generated hoaxes, and conspiracy theories. Finally, on July 11 India's air safety organization, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the cause of the disaster. The 15-page report pinpointed a dark and disturbing factor as the reason for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, someone or something cut the flow of fuel to both engines, almost simultaneously. This caused a brief but fatal dual engine shutdown that proved impossible for the plane to recover from. The implications of that double shutdown are quite bleak — but there's still a lot we don't know. What caused the crash? In the weeks following the tragedy, public speculation about the potential cause ranged from a bird strike to an electrical problem; some suggested fuel contamination, others a malfunction with the wing flaps. Many focused on what seemed to have been an extreme occurrence suggested by the visibility of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), which deploys when there are engine problems: a total engine failure. Over on YouTube, many analyzed the crash, including some pilots. Among them was Trevor Smith, call sign 'Hoover,' a former military pilot who now flies for a commercial airline. On the side, he runs the YouTube crash analysis channel Pilot Debrief. Following the Air India crash, he emphasized what seemed to be the dual loss of thrust to both engines, and speculated that perhaps one engine had lost thrust for an unknown reason and that then one of the pilots had accidentally turned off the fuel control switch to the other engine, causing both to lose thrust. Smith was hypothesizing a scenario in which at least one engine had been lost due to a mechanical failure, and an overwhelmed pilot mistakenly deactivated the other engine. The preliminary report, however, was more grim. It rejected all of those possibilities and instead pointed firmly toward a simple but unthinkable event: Both engines were shut down, first one and then the other, by way of the fuel control cutoff switch. In most Boeing airplanes, the flow of fuel to the engines gets activated via two fuel control switches. In the Boeing 787, the jet fuel control switches sit in the main console of the aircraft just below the throttles (which are used to control thrust power). The fuel switches are not easy to engage by accident; they have a built-in spring-loaded locking mechanism that requires anyone using them to first pull up on the knobs, turn them slightly, and then maneuver them up or down into the position you want — a bit like a safety-proof lid on a pill bottle. Additionally, two raised metal guards on either side of the two switches protect against accidental bumping or jostling. There were no historical issues with the switches on this particular 787, and that section of the console had been refurbished as recently as 2023. Additionally, following the crash, other Air India Boeings were inspected, and no fuel switch issues were found with any of them. In a second inspection, Air India reportedly found no issues with the locking mechanisms on the switches either. This crucial context underscores both the reliability of the switches — they were functioning normally with no problems — and the guardrails that were in place to protect against any associated mishaps. With the metal guards and the locking mechanisms, it would be all but impossible for an accident to knock both switches into the cutoff position, especially at the same time. And yet what we know from the preliminary report is that the fuel cutoff switches were somehow switched from 'run' to 'cutoff' — from 'on' to 'off,' effectively. They were moved immediately after the airplane lifted off the ground and reached its maximum takeoff speed of 180 knots, or about 207 miles per hour. In a follow-up analysis video, Smith mapped out the timeline provided in the report, emphasizing that the two switches were turned off in quick succession, just a second apart — a short gap that makes sense, he noted, if someone were to move their hand from one switch to another. Without a fuel supply, the engines immediately lost power. The RAT began supplying hydraulic power to the plane a few seconds after the fuel was cut off. A few seconds after this, one or both pilots realized what had happened. They placed the switches back into the correct position about nine seconds after they were moved. The engines began to restart, but by the time they had recovered, it was already too late. Initial media reports claimed that whichever pilot made the mayday call to air traffic control had stated, 'Thrust not achieved,' as the explanation for the call shortly before losing contact. However, the investigative report didn't include this statement, and recordings from the cockpit have not been made public. What we do know is that according to the preliminary report, 'one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off [the fuel]. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.' So was the cutoff done intentionally? 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CBS News
9 hours ago
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Some Air India plane crash victims' families in U.K. were sent the wrong remains, lawyer says
London — The families of some British victims of the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad have discovered that remains repatriated to the U.K. were wrongly identified as being their loved ones, a lawyer who says his firm is representing over 20 victims' families told CBS News. Of the 242 people on board the Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London's Gatwick airport that crashed on June 12 just minutes after takeoff, 52 were British citizens. The cause of the crash has not been confirmed, but a preliminary report released earlier this month by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that the cockpit cutoff switches for fuel supply to both of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner's engines were switched, one after another, within one second, leading to both engines losing thrust. James Healy-Pratt, an aviation lawyer representing a number of U.K. families, said the remains of at least 12 British victims of the crash had been repatriated to the U.K., but that two of them had been misidentified. "There was one family who believed they had accompanied their loved one back from India, having gone out there to give DNA for the identification, and then (when they returned to the U.K.) were informed that the remains in the casket were nothing to do with them," Healy-Pratt told CBS News. Healy-Pratt said the mistakes were discovered when the Inner West London coroner, Dr. Fiona Wilcox, sought to verify the victims' identities by matching their DNA to samples provided by the families. 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Healy-Pratt said the statement from the Indian Foreign Ministry statement was "simply not good enough." "It lacks specifics. It lacks any detailed explanation of the chain of custody of the remains from the time of identification to DNA matching to placing in caskets. It lacks any assurances that there may be remains, whether mislabeled, unidentified or identified, still in India," he said. "The families want to draw a line under their emotional distress that's come out from this and so that requires detailed hard work by the Indian authorities to provide assurances that there are no further remains of British nationals either unidentified, identified or mislabeled, misidentified in India. And the line will not be drawn until that cast iron assurance is provided. And at the moment, it's not forthcoming," he said. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to meet in London this week, and Healy-Pratt said he hoped this issue would make it onto their agenda. Healy-Pratt also said that, in addition to seeking the remains of their loved ones, the British families want to know the cause of the Air India crash, so their lawyers are independently investigating. The families, Healy-Pratt said, want to make sure any safety recommendations that come from formal probes are implemented internationally. "And then finally, they want financial justice," Healy-Pratt said. He said the families legal team had "already made an approach to the lawyers for Air India in London, and we're progressing claims there in the High Court. And we'll also be filing an action against Boeing in the U.S. courts to get more information about these fuel control cutoff switches, because they do have a checkered history."Arshad R. Zargar contributed to this report.
