Air India said the Boeing aircraft crashed in the city of Ahmedabad shortly after taking off for London Gatwick Airport. India’s health minister said “many people” had been killed.
An Air India flight carrying 242 passengers and crew members crashed shortly after taking off in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, the airline said. There was no immediate information about survivors, but India’s health minister said “many people” had died.
Air India said Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick Airport had taken off at around 1:40 p.m. on Thursday. The airline said that the plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, was carrying 169 Indian citizens, 53 British, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. It added that injured people were being taken to hospitals.
The plane departed from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, which shut down and suspended all flight operations after the crash, the airport said. It had been scheduled to land in London at 6:25 p.m., London Gatwick Airport said.
India’s minister of civil aviation, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, said that rescue teams had been mobilized to the crash site.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said the crash was “heartbreaking beyond words.” In a statement on social media, he said, “In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it.”
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Air India, said that the company was focused on “supporting all the affected people and their families” and that it was doing all it could to assist the emergency response teams at the site.
Here’s what else to know:
- Boeing troubles: Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft have experienced operational problems with passengers onboard, resulting in evacuations and injuries. There have been no fatal crashes previously recorded for the aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
- Crash site: The plane crashed near the residential part of a local medical college, according to a leader of the state’s ruling party. The leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said efforts were focused on getting injured people out of the area. Footage showed firefighters at the site dousing the wreckage in front of charred residential buildings.
- Britain’s reaction: The British government said it was working with the Indian authorities to “urgently establish the facts,” and opened a hotline for British citizens in India seeking information about the crash. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that scenes of the crash were “devastating” and that he was being updated on the situation.
Isabella Kwai, Hari Kumar, Lizzie Dearden and Mujib Mashal contributed reporting.
Photos released by India’s Central Industrial Security Force, which oversees airport security, showed extensive damage on the medical college campus. One handout photo from the agency showed the rear half of the plane sticking out from a damaged building.
