Airline crashes seconds after takeoff, killing over 270 people

A London-bound Boeing 787-8 crashed a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad, Gujarat on Thursday, killing over 270 people, AP News reported. 

Air India flight AI171 reached a maximum altitude of 650ft before plummeting into the B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital, resulting in the deaths of 241 passengers and at least 29 others on the ground, including five medical students. One passenger survived the crash, escaping through an opening in the plane. Authorities have recovered the aircraft’s “black box” and are investigating what officials are calling one of India’s deadliest aviation disasters.  

Air India flight AI171 departed the Ahmedabad International Airport at 1:39 pm on Thursday, heading to London, Gatwick on an approximately nine-hour journey. Seconds later, video footage published by CNN shows the Boeing 787-8 struggling to stay aloft as it descended. The aircraft disappeared behind nearby buildings, before a “huge red fireball shot into the sky.” 

Through FlightRadar24, a flight tracking website, the plane used the full length of the runway, reaching an altitude of 625 feet before tracking suddenly stopped.  

There were 242 passengers and crew members were aboard the flight, Air India relayed to CNN. This included 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.  

Of the 242 passengers aboard flight AI171, only one person survived. The Hindustan Times reported this person to be a British man named Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who is currently receiving treatment in a hospital.  

“I don’t know how I managed to escape,” Ramesh said to BBC. “At first, I thought I was going to die. I managed to open my eyes, unfastened my seat belt and tried to exit the plane … My door broke down and I saw a small space … I tried to get out of the plane.” 

Ramesh sat on seat 11A, which was located next to an emergency exit. While it is unsure if the emergency exit played a role in his survival, he said that he escaped through a small space near the door by his seat.  

Coincidentally, a survivor of the 2010 Mangaluru plane crash was also seated in 11A. According to Times of India, he managed to jump out the plane through a small hole moments before the plane caught fire, like Ramesh. This repeated coincidence has led some media outlets to refer to Ramesh’s survival as the “miracle of seat 11A”.  

Investigators and rescue workers have recovered one of two “black boxes” from the wreckage, Reuters wrote. These digital flight data recorders will be analyzed over the next three months to determine exactly what happened and how Air India flight AI171 crashed. 

Cover image: Air India, Instagram