Plane with 244 on board crashes at Indian airport

An Air India passenger plane bound for London with 244 people on board has crashed minutes after taking off from India’s western city of Ahmedabad, the airline and police say, without specifying whether there were any fatalities.

The plane was headed to Gatwick airport in the UK on Thursday, Air India said, while police officers said it crashed in a civilian area near the airport.

There were 232 passengers and 12 crew members onboard the flight.

Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.

“At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will share further updates,” Air India said on X.

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 rising into the sky from beyond the houses.

Vision also showed debris on fire, with thick black smoke rising up into the sky near the airport.

They also showed visuals of people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad airport, the aircraft departed at 1.39pm from runway 23. It gave a “Mayday” call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter no 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.

India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X that rescue teams have been mobilized, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site.

“We are on highest alert. I am personally monitoring the situation,” he said.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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.

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

The last fatal plane crash in India 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 in 2020. 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.