All 242 people on board the Air India plane have died, local newspaper Indian Express said, citing police.
The plane was headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital, Air India said, while police officers said it crashed in a residential area near the airport.
The airline said the flight was departing from Ahmedabad Airport with 242 people on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. These included 217 adults and 11 children, a source told Reuters. Of them, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian, Air India said.
Ahmedabad police commissioner Gyanendra Singh Malik told the Associated Press that “some locals would also have died” in the crash on Thursday.
More than 100 bodies, most of them badly charred, had been brought to the local government hospital for autopsy, police said.
India’s CNN News-18 TV channel said the plane crashed on top of the dining area of the state-run B.J. Medical College hostel, killing many medical students as well. It showed a visual of a portion of the aircraft perched atop the building.
Rescue workers said that at least 30 to 35 bodies had been recovered from the site and that more people were trapped.
A video of the incident circulating online shows the Air India aircraft, which was carrying more than 240 people, flying over a residential area before crashing, creating what appears to be a huge fireball followed by large plumes of black smoke.
Images of the aftermath of the crash showed parts of the plane embedded into a residential building as firefighters continued to tackle the smoke.
Pieces of the aircraft’s landing gear, fuselage and tail could all be seen protruding from the building.
Thursday’s crash comes in proximity to the 40th anniversary of the Air India Toronto-New Delhi crash, which happened off the Kerry/West Cork coast on June 23, 1985.
A bomb placed on board the Air India flight 182 by Sikh militants exploded and plunged into the Atlantic. All 329 passengers and crew were killed. The flight was travelling from Toronto and had a first stopover in Montreal, and was due for a second stopover in London Heathrow before reaching its final destination of New Delhi.
Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the London-bound plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.
It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, which began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. The plane that crashed on Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in January 2014, Flightradar24 said.
The crash occurred just after the plane took off, television channels reported. One channel showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge jet of fire rose into the sky from beyond the houses.
Visuals also showed debris on fire, with thick black smoke rising up into the sky near the airport.
They also showed people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.
“My sister-in-law was going to London. Within an hour, I got news that the plane had crashed,” Poonam Patel, a relative of one of the passengers, told news agency ANI at the government hospital in Ahmedabad.
Ramila, the mother of a student at the medical college, told ANI her son had gone to the hostel for his lunch break when the plane crashed. “My son is safe, and I have spoken to him. He jumped from the second floor, so he suffered some injuries,” she said.
According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad Airport, the aircraft departed at 1.39pm (8.09pm Irish time) from runway 23. It gave a “Mayday” call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter there was no response from the aircraft.
Flightradar24 also said that it received the last signal from the aircraft seconds after it took off.
“The aircraft involved is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with registration VT-ANB,” it said.
US aerospace safety consultant Anthony Brickhouse said one problematic sign from videos of the aircraft was that the landing gear was down at a phase of flight when it would typically be up.
“If you didn’t know what was happening, you would think that plane was on approach to a runway,” Brickhouse said.
Boeing said it is aware of initial reports and is working to gather more information. Boeing, opens new tab shares fell 6.8% to $199.13 in pre-market trade.
Britain is working with Indian authorities to urgently establish the facts around the crash and to provide support to those involved, the country’s foreign office said in a statement posted on its website.
The Indian aviation minister’s office said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had directed it to ensure all support was extended to the rescue efforts immediately.
All relevant agencies were on high alert, and coordinated efforts were underway, the aviation minister’s office added.
Ahmedabad is the main city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.
Ahmedabad airport said it had suspended all flight operations with immediate effect. The airport is operated by India’s Adani Group conglomerate.
“We are shocked and deeply saddened by the tragedy of Air India Flight 171,” Gautam Adani, founder and chairman of the group, posted on X.
“Our hearts go out to the families who have suffered an unimaginable loss. We are working closely with all authorities and extending full support to the families on the ground,” he said.
The last fatal plane crash in India was in 2020 and involved Air India Express, the airline’s low-cost arm.
The airline’s Boeing 737 overshot a “table-top” runway at Kozhikode International Airport in southern India. The plane skidded off the runway, plunging into a valley and crashing nose-first into the ground.
Twenty-one people were killed in that crash.
The formerly state-owned Air India was taken over by Indian conglomerate Tata Group in 2022, and merged with Vistara – a joint venture between the group and Singapore Airlines – in 2024.
Tata said an emergency centre had been activated and a support team set up for families seeking information.
