AI aircraft crashes soon after take-off

Ahmedabad-London Boeing Dreamliner flight had 242 fliers

- Daanish Anand

An Air India Dreamliner carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad on Thursday, in India's first major air accident in nearly five years.

Air traffic control received a distress call from the pilots at 1:38 PM, moments before the aircraft headed for London plunged into doctors' hostel attached to the B.J. Medical College. As per Flightradar 24, a flight tracking platform, signal from the aircraft was lost less than a minute after take-off, while the plane was at 625 ft.

The aircraft had 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals. Gujarat's former chief minister Vijay Rupani was among the passengers. The Ahmedabad airport shut operations for over two hours, before reopening at 4:05 PM. There was no official count of casualties; however, at least one survivor was being treated at a city hospital.

"Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly," Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a survivor who suffered impact injuries on his chest, eyes and feet, told HT at a city hospital.

This is the first crash for Air India under Tata Group ownership, and the first for any Dreamliner, which has been flying since 2009.