NEW DELHI (Reuters) -An Air India plane bound for 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.
The plane was headed to Gatwick airport in the UK, Air India said, while police officers said it crashed in a civilian area near the airport.
The 242 people included 217 adults and 11 children, a source told Reuters. Of them, 169 were Indian nationals, 43 were Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian.
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 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 cloud of fire rising 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 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 1.39 p.m. (0809 GMT) from runway 23. It gave a “Mayday” call, signaling 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.
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Boeing shares fell 6.8% to $199.13 in pre-market trade.
The Indian aviation minister’s office said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had directed it to ensure all support is extended to the rescue efforts immediately.
All relevant agencies are 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 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 center had been activated and a support team set up for families seeking information.
(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta, Aditi Shah, Aditya Kalra, Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Shivam Patel; Writing by Sakshi Dayal and YP Rajesh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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