Deadliest Dreamliner disaster: What we know so far about Air India flight crash in Ahmedabad

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Family members of one of the crew members of Air India flight 171 mourn at their house in Thoubal Mayai Leikai near Imphal in the Indian state of Manipur yesterday. — AFP pic

PARIS, June 13 — A Boeing 787 Dreamliner carrying 242 people crashed on yesterday after taking off from the Indian city of Ahmedabad bound for London, with officials saying that just one person on the jet survived and at least 24 people on the ground died.

Police said 265 bodies had been taken to hospital in the main city of India’s western state of Gujarat.

Here is what we know so far about what is believed to be the first deadly accident for Boeing’s Dreamliner:

What happened?

The Boeing 787-8 jet heading for London’s Gatwick Airport left Ahmedabad with 242 people on board, including two pilots and 10 cabin crew.

Air India’s flight 171 issued a mayday call and crashed “immediately after takeoff”, around 1:40 pm (0810 GMT), India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation said.

Videos posted on social media, which AFP was not able to immediately verify, showed the jet losing altitude—with its nose up—before it hit a medical staff hostel and exploded into a ball of fire.

Air India said the passengers included 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals and a Canadian.

Medics transfer bodies of victims onto an ambulance after Air India Flight 171 crashed in a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad yesterday. — AFP pic

Scenes of horror

The plane smashed into a building housing doctors and their families in a crowded residential area of Ahmedabad, a city home to about eight million people.

At the site of the crash between a hospital and the Ghoda Camp neighbourhood, an AFP journalist saw people recovering bodies and firefighters spraying water on the smouldering wreckage.

A resident, who declined to be named, said: “We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames.”

“When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames,” another resident, Poonam Patni, told AFP, adding that many of the bodies were burned.

A doctor named Krishna said that “the nose and front wheel landed on the canteen building where students were having lunch.”

He said he saw “about 15 to 20 burned bodies”, while he and his colleagues rescued around 15 students.

‘One survivor’

One survivor was confirmed by Dhananjay Dwivedi, principal secretary of Gujarat state’s health department, to AFP.

Police said 265 bodies had been recovered from the site.

Ahmadabad airport closed with all flights suspended until further notice.

Air India chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said an emergency centre had been activated and a support team set up for families seeking information.

Tata Group, owners of Air India, offered financial aid of 10 million rupees ($117,000) to the families of each victim and promised to cover the medical expenses of the injured.

Boeing investigating the incident

India’s Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said a formal investigation had been started and US plane maker Boeing said it was “working to gather more information” on the incident to help Air India.

The British and US accident investigation agencies said they had sent teams to support the Indian inquiry.

A source close to the case said this was the first time a 787 Dreamliner had crashed.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the pride of the US company’s catalogue for long-distance planes: a fuel-efficient, wide-body, lightweight aircraft able to transport up to 330 people. — AFP