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Monday, July 7, 2025

Air India flight with more than 240 aboard crashes after takeoff

by

25 days ago
20250612
Rescuers work at the site of an airplane that crashed in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, Thursday, June 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

Rescuers work at the site of an airplane that crashed in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, Thursday, June 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

Ajit Solanki

An Air In­dia pas­sen­ger plane bound for Lon­don with more than 240 peo­ple on board crashed Thurs­day in In­dia’s north­west­ern city of Ahmed­abad, the air­line said.

Vi­su­als on lo­cal tele­vi­sion chan­nels showed smoke bil­low­ing from the crash site in what ap­peared to be a pop­u­lat­ed area near the air­port in Ahmed­abad, a city with a pop­u­la­tion of more than 5 mil­lion and the cap­i­tal of Gu­jarat, Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di’s home state.

Fire­fight­ers doused the smok­ing wreck­age of the plane, which would have been ful­ly loaded with fu­el short­ly af­ter take­off, and ad­ja­cent mul­ti-sto­ry build­ings with wa­ter. Charred bod­ies lay on the ground.

“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.

Mo­di called the crash “heart­break­ing be­yond words.”

“In this sad hour, my thoughts are with every­one af­fect­ed,” he said in a so­cial me­dia post.

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.

Faiz Ahmed Kid­wai, the di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the di­rec­torate of civ­il avi­a­tion, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that Air In­dia flight AI 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 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.”

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 cen­tre 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.

British Cab­i­net min­is­ter Lucy Pow­ell said the gov­ern­ment will pro­vide “all the sup­port that it can” to those af­fect­ed by the crash.

“This is an un­fold­ing sto­ry, and it will un­doubt­ed­ly be caus­ing a huge amount of wor­ry and con­cern to the many, many fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties here and those wait­ing for the ar­rival of their loved ones,” she told law­mak­ers in the House of Com­mons.

“We send our deep­est sym­pa­thy and thoughts to all those fam­i­lies, and the gov­ern­ment will pro­vide all the sup­port that it can with those in In­dia and those in this coun­try as well,” she added.

Britain has very close ties with In­dia. There were near­ly 1.9 mil­lion peo­ple in the coun­try of In­di­an de­scent, ac­cord­ing to the 2021 U.K. cen­sus.

The last ma­jor pas­sen­ger plane crash in In­dia was in 2020 when an Air In­dia Ex­press Boe­ing-737 skid­ded off a hill­top run­way in south­ern In­dia, killing 21 peo­ple.

The worst air dis­as­ter in In­dia was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Sau­di Ara­bi­an Air­lines flight col­lid­ed midair with a Kaza­khas­tan Air­lines Flight near Char­ki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes.

The crash comes days be­fore the open­ing of the Paris Air Show, a ma­jor avi­a­tion ex­po where Boe­ing and Eu­ro­pean ri­val Air­bus will show­case their air­craft and bat­tle for jet or­ders from air­line cus­tomers.

Boe­ing has been in re­cov­ery mode for more than six years af­ter Li­on Air Flight 610, a Boe­ing 737 Max 8, plunged in­to the Ja­va Sea off the coast of In­done­sia min­utes af­ter take­off from Jakar­ta, killing all 189 peo­ple on board. Five months lat­er, Ethiopi­an Air­lines Flight 302, a Boe­ing 737 Max 8, crashed af­ter take­off from Ad­dis Aba­ba, Ethiopia, killing 157 pas­sen­gers and crew mem­bers.

Shares of Boe­ing Co. tum­bled near­ly 9% be­fore trad­ing opened in the U.S.

___

Roy re­port­ed from New Del­hi. Sheikh Saaliq in Sri­na­gar, In­dia, Pan Py­las, Kelvin Chan and Bri­an Mel­ley in Lon­don and An­ni­ka Wolters, David Ris­ing, Adam Schreck and Lo­ri­an Be­langer in Bangkok con­tributed to this re­port.

AHMED­ABAD, In­dia (AP) —

IndiaInternational Plane crash


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