How the Air India plane came crashing to earth
By Christian Edwards, Antoinette Radford and Rhea Mogul, CNN
(CNN) — In the blue skies above western India, flight AI171 was struggling to gain altitude.
The London-bound plane had barely left the runway at Ahmedabad airport on Thursday before it was careening back to earth.
In a video, the aircraft was seen slowly sinking behind residential buildings, before a huge fireball blast upward.
Only one of the 242 people on board the Air India flight survived, according to the airline. In addition to those on board, people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed into the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel. In total, at least 290 people had died, a senior doctor at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital told CNN.
A CNN analysis geolocating multiple social media videos and examining flight tracking data shows how the deadly incident unfolded.
Here’s what we know.
1:39 p.m.: Take-off
The Air India flight, AI171, took off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was headed to London Gatwick, and scheduled to land at 6:25 p.m. local time (1:25 p.m. ET).
Air India said 242 passengers and crew members were on board. That included 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.
Due to Britain’s large Indian diaspora, many of those on board may have been returning home after visiting family in India, or traveling to Britain to visit family there.
FlightRadar 24, a flight tracking site, said the plane used the full length of the 11,499-feet-long Runway 23 at the Ahmedabad airport in its takeoff.
The flight took off at 1:39 p.m. (4:09 a.m. ET), and was due to land around nine hours later.
Seconds later: Mayday
Data from FlightRadar 24 showed the plane leaving the airport – before, suddenly, the tracking stopped.
The aircraft had reached an altitude of 625 feet (190 meters) when its signal was lost, the tracker said.
FlightTracker24 data said it began to plunge down to earth at a speed of about 475 feet per minute.
Realizing that something was wrong, staff on the plane gave a Mayday call to air traffic control (ATC), Indian civil aviation authorities said. That call came less than a minute after take-off.
Crash landing
In a video shared on social media by a person just under 200 meters (655 feet) from the airport perimeter, the plane was seen struggling to stay aloft.
As the plane got closer to the ground, its tail began to sag more deeply beneath its nose.
The aircraft got farther and farther from the person filming, before it disappeared below apartment buildings.
A huge red fireball then shot into the sky. Other videos, shot from different locations in the city showed massive plumes of black smoke.
The wreckage
The plane that had just a minute ago been safely on the Ahmedabad runway had gone up in flames, just under a mile from the airport.
Shocking images showed the plane’s tail lodged in a concrete building. Officials said the bulk of the plane had crashed into a hostel housing doctors working in the local hospital. Inside the building, images showed metal plates of uneaten food on cafeteria-style tables – with a wall blown out from the impact.
Locals began to gather around the main crash site as black smoke poured from its windows.
Videos showed grisly scenes unfolding on the street, as people began to try to put out the blaze and search for survivors.
The charred remains of the plane’s fuselage – still showing part of its registration, “VT-ANB” – could be seen lying on the debris-strewn street. Closer footage showed burned bodies being pulled from the ruins. In one video, a man retrieved a suitcase from the wreckage.
The aftermath
Only one person on board the flight survived, according to the airline.
The Hindustan Times named the survivor as a British national, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, and said he was receiving treatment. What appears to be a copy of the flight manifest, shared by news agency IANS, listed Vishwash Kumar Ramesh as having been assigned seat 11A and boarded.
The Hindustan Times said it spoke to Ramesh in a local hospital, and quoted him as saying: “Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.”
The man’s family later said they had spoken to him and he reported being “fine,” while a doctor treating him described his condition as “not very critical” and said he could be released soon.
The number of casualties among people on the ground remains unclear.
The Federation of All India Medical Association said between 50 and 60 students have been admitted to local hospitals after the flight crashed into the hostel at the BJ Medical College and Hospital. It said four or five students are missing and another two or three others are in intensive care.
The crash is one of the deadliest worldwide since 2014, when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the incident was “heartbreaking beyond words” and that he was working with the authorities involved in the disaster. The plane crashed in India’s western Gujarat region, where Modi was born and where he served as chief state minister from 2001 to 2014.
Among the people on board who were killed is thought to be Vijay Rupani, the former chief minister of Gujarat.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the scenes were “devastating.” His foreign minister, David Lammy, said the United Kingdom had activated a crisis team in both India’s capital, New Delhi, and in London.
The day after
While the authorities’ immediate focus is on confirming the number of casualties and providing support to the victims’ families, attention will soon turn to what caused the crash.
Investigators will focus on whether human error, mechanical failure, poor maintenance, or a combination of those factors, played a part in a the crash.
A “black box” from the flight has been recovered, three officials from the country’s National Disaster Response Force told CNN on Friday.
It has been handed over to investigating authorities, the officials said.
Last year, a whistleblower claimed that Boeing was taking shortcuts in its manufacturing of the 787-Dreamliner model, claims disputed and described as “inaccurate” by Boeing. The Federal Aviation Administration in the United States is investigating the whistleblower’s formal complaint.
Shares in Boeing tanked by more than 7% in pre-market trade Thursday. Stocks in many other airlines also fell.
For Boeing, the crash is the latest in a series of incidents that have shaken consumers’ fears in the safety of its aircraft.
For Air India, the crash will likely damage a years-long effort to overturn its image as a struggling, debt-ridden airline to a safe, modern carrier appealing to India’s burgeoning middle class.
Air India last suffered a crash this deadly in 2010, when 158 people were killed after one of its jets overshot a runway in southern India.
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