Rescue teams with sniffer dogs are combing the crash site of a London-bound passenger jet which ploughed into a residential area of India’s Ahmedabad city, killing at least 265 people on board and on the ground.
One man aboard the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – carrying 242 passengers and crew – miraculously survived yesterday’s fiery crash, which left the tailpiece of the aircraft jutting out of the second floor of a hostel for medical staff from a nearby hospital.
The nose and front wheel landed on a canteen building where students were having lunch, witnesses said.
The plane crashed less than a minute after takeoff, around lunchtime yesterday, after lifting barely 100 metres from the ground.
The plane issued a mayday call and “crashed immediately after takeoff”, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Kanan Desai said that 265 bodies had so far been counted – suggesting at least 24 people died on the ground – but the toll may rise as more body parts are recovered.
“The official number of deceased will be declared only after DNA testing is completed,” Home Minister Amit Shah said in a statement last night, adding that “families whose relatives are abroad have already been informed, and their DNA samples will be taken”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited the devastated neighbourhood where Air India flight 171 went down, described the crash as “heartbreaking beyond words”.
The airline said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian on board the flight bound for London’s Gatwick airport, as well as 12 crew members.
Air India said the sole survivor from the plane – a British national of Indian origin who local media named as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh – was being treated in hospital.
“He said, ‘I have no idea how I exited the plane'”, his brother Nayan Kumar Ramesh said from Leicester, England.
In Ahmedabad, disconsolate relatives of passengers gathered today at an emergency centre to give DNA samples so their loved ones could be identified.
Ashfaque Nanabawa, 40, said he had come to find his cousin Akeel Nanabawa, who had been aboard with his wife and three-year-old daughter. They had spoken as his cousin sat in the plane, just before takeoff.
“He called us and he said: ‘I am in the plane and I have boarded safely and everything was okay’. That was his last call.”
Ahmedabad, the main city in India’s Gujarat state, is home to around eight million people and its busy airport is surrounded by densely packed residential areas.
US planemaker Boeing said it was in touch with Air India and stood “ready to support them” over the incident, which a source close to the case said was the first crash for a 787 Dreamliner.
The UK and US air accident investigation agencies announced they were dispatching teams to support their Indian counterparts.
Tata Group, owners of Air India, offered financial aid of 10 million rupees (€101,000) to “the families of each person who has lost their life in this tragedy”, as well as funds to cover medical expenses of those injured.
India has suffered a series of fatal air crashes, including a 1996 disaster when two jets collided mid-air over New Delhi, killing nearly 350 people.
In 2010, an Air India Express jet crashed and burst into flames at Mangalore airport in southwest India, killing 158 of the 166 passengers and crew on board.
Experts said it was too early to speculate on what may have caused yesterday’s crash.
India’s airline industry has boomed in recent years with Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), last month calling it “nothing short of phenomenal”.
The growth of its economy has made India and its 1.4 billion people the world’s fourth-largest air market – domestic and international – with IATA projecting it will become the third biggest within the decade.
