New Delhi: An Air India plane headed to London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from India’s western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, the airline and police said, without specifying whether there were any fatalities.
Flight AI 171 was headed to London’s Gatwick airport in the United Kingdom, Air India said, while police officers said it crashed in a civilian area called Meghani Nagar near the airport.
Firefighters work at the site of the crash.Credit: AP
Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which is a widebody, twin-engined plane – one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
“At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will share further updates at the earliest,” Air India said on X.
Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, said there were 232 passengers and 12 crew members on the flight. Air India said the flight had 169 Indian, 53 British, one Canadian and seven Portuguese passengers on board. Of those, 217 were adults and 11 were children, sources said.
Smoke rises after the plane crash in Ahmedabad, India.Credit: AP
The injured were being taken to the nearest hospitals, the airline said.
The crash occurred when the aircraft was taking off, television channels reported. One channel showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge cloud of fire rose into the sky from beyond the houses.
They also showed debris on fire and people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.
