Air India flight with over 240 aboard crashes after take-off

The airline said the Gatwick Airport-bound flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Of those, Air India said there were 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.

“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.

Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told AP that Air India flight 171, a Boeing 787-8, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. local time. He said 244 people were on board and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the discrepancy with Air India’s numbers.

All efforts were being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site, India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X. The Indian army said in a statement that its teams were assisting civil authorities to clear debris and help treat the injured.

The first crash of a Boeing 787

The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engine plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

Boeing said it was aware of the reports of the crash and was “working to gather more information.”

Aviation consultant John M. Cox, the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, told the AP from Los Angeles that while the first images of the crash were poor, it appeared the aircraft had its nose up and was not climbing, which is one of the things that investigators would look at.

“At this point, it’s very, very, very early, we don’t know a whole lot,” he said. “But the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring — the parameters on the flight data recorder are in the thousands — so once we get that recorder, they’ll be able to know pretty quickly what happened.”

The aircraft was introduced in 2009, and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the flightradar24 website.

Air India’s chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said at the moment “our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families.”

He said on X that the airline had set up an emergency center and support team for families seeking information about those who were on the flight.

“Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event,” he said.