Plane carrying 242 crashes in India, at least one passenger reportedly survives

India’s Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah, told reporters today that one passenger aboard Air India 171 “fortunately survived, and I have met him.”

He did not disclose details on that passenger’s condition.

“The entire country is in shock, and stands with the kin of those who have lost their lives,” Shah said. “On behalf of the Prime Minister, the central government and the Gujarat government, I pay my tributes to those who have lost their lives in this incident.”

Shah said he spoke with government officials within 10 minutes of the crash, and central and state governments are involved in the rescue operation. 

British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a survivor of the deadly Air India plane crash, is seen bloodied and limping following the catastrophe.

The only known survivor of the plane crash in India was traveling with his brother, according to relatives in the U.K.

The family of British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh have told NBC’s partner in the U.K., Sky News, that they have not heard from another relative they believe was also on the flight.

A flight manifest seen by NBC News shows that U.K. national Mr. Ajay Kumar Ramesh was in seat 11J.

The plane crashed into an area with multiple buildings. Several hospitals are near the crash site.

The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team of U.S. investigators to assist in the investigation into the crash of the Air India Flight 171 in Ahmedabad, India.

The plane was a Boeing 787 — an American-manufactured aircraft.

President Donald Trump spoke to reporters about the Air India plane crash today, calling it “one of the worst in aviation history.” Trump also said he offered India any assistance they might need.

Family members of one of the crew members of Air India Flight 171 mourn at their residence near Imphal, in the Indian state of Manipur, following today’s fatal crash.

Indian media reports say that a British national survived the crash. NBC News has cross-checked the flight manifest and confirmed that the name of the man and the seat number match those reported by local media.

Family members have confirmed to Sky News that British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh survived the plane crash in Ahmedabad this morning. The family has not heard from another family member who they believe was on the flight.

The Hindustan Times reports that a 40-year-old British man with the same name told them, “Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.” The newspaper has posted a photo of him and a flight boarding card.

The news agency ANI is citing Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik as saying one man survived and is in the hospital. It give the same seat number as the one on the boarding card published by the Hindustan Times.

NBC News has contacted the British Foreign Office for comment.

Air India Flight 171 crashed into a hostel for students at B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital and their relatives.

The wife of a doctor was found dead and 50 students from the college’s bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery program were admitted to the hospital and are in stable condition, the Federation of All Indian Medical Associations wrote on X.

Two or three students are in the high dependency unit/ICU.

Four or five students are missing and three or four relatives of resident doctors are missing, the organization said.

The federation also shared photos showing the extensive damage to the hostel.

Air India Flight 171 gave a mayday call shortly after it took off, India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation said in a statement.

The plane crashed “immediately” after takeoff, the DGCA said. Following the mayday call, there was no response to calls from air traffic control.

“The aircraft was under the command of Capt Sumeet Sabharwal with First Officer Clive Kundar,” the statement said. “Capt Sumeet Sabharwal is a LTC with 8200 Hrs of experience. The copilot had 1100 Hrs of flying experience.”

Air India said it added another hotline number for foreign nationals, +91 8062779200, for crash-related passenger queries and assistance.

Earlier, the airline set up a dedicated local hotline for passengers at +91 99741 11327.

In the next few hours, passengers would have been checking in for their Air India flight from London to the southern Indian city of Goa.

Instead, the Air India check-in desks at London’s Gatwick Airport are quiet: unstaffed, cordoned off and with no customers jostling to offload their bags.

After arriving here from India, Flight 171 would have become Flight 146, taking off again at 8:30 p.m. local time (3:30 p.m. ET) for Goa. That will of course no longer happen. Air India has no other flights scheduled today, hence the desks being closed down.

Now at the south terminal, there is a heavy presence of airport staff wearing high-visibility jackets, providing information and guidance relating to the crash and redirecting journalists to a media pen in the north terminal.

Tata Group, one of the owners of Air India, will provide 1 crore rupees, or $117,000, to the families of the Air India Flight 171 crash victims.

“We will also cover the medical expenses of those injured and ensure that they receive all necessary care and support,” Tata Sons and Tata Group chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said on X.

The company will also “provide support” in the rebuilding of the BJ Medical College hostel the plane crashed into.

“No words can adequately express the grief we feel at this moment. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost their loved ones, and with those who have been injured,” he said.

Campbell Wilson, the CEO of Air India, has just given an official statement on the crash in a video posted to X.

“This is a difficult day for all of us at Air India, and our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, their families and loved ones,” Wilson said.

He added that the airline was actively working with the local authorities on all emergency response efforts after injured passengers were taken to the nearest hospitals. News of injured passengers seems to conflict with earlier police reports that there appeared to be no survivors.

A special team of caregivers from Air India was also on its way to Ahmedabad to provide additional support, he said.

“Investigations will take time, but anything we can do now, we are doing,” he added.

There were 242 passengers and crew members on Air India Flight 171.

Of those, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were British nationals, one was a Canadian national, and seven were Portuguese nationals, Air India said.

Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened by the tragedy involving an Air India aircraft,” according to a message sent out on his behalf on Telegram. 

“His holiness Pope Leo XIV sends his heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives, together with the assurance of prayers for all involved in the recovery efforts,” his message said. “Commending the souls of the deceased to the mercy of the Almighty, his Holiness invokes upon all affected the divine blessings of healing and peace.”

Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said on X that seven Portuguese nationals were traveling on Air India Flight 171.

“On behalf of myself and the Government, I would like to express my condolences and deep solidarity with the families of the victims,” he wrote in Portuguese.

Air India Flight 171 was carrying 242 passengers, including one Canadian citizen.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a post on X that he was “devastated” to learn of the crash, adding that his “thoughts are with the loved ones of everyone on board.”

Carney said Canada’s transportation officials were in close contact with their Indian counterparts, adding, “I am receiving regular updates as the response to this tragedy unfolds.”

London-bound Air India Flight 171 is a Boeing 787 aircraft that was manufactured in Seattle and is 11.5 years old, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.

Air India bought the aircraft in January 2014, but the first flight took off on Dec. 14, 2023. The plane accrued more than 41,000 hours of flying, with almost 8,000 takeoffs and landings, including some 700 cycles in the past 12 months — the average time for an aircraft of that build, Cirium said.

The plane had 18 business class seats and 238 economy class seats.

Air India, which owns 190 aircraft, operated 34 of the 1,148 variants of Boeing 787 planes in service globally, including the plane that crashed. Boeing said in an official statement that “its thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders and all affected.”

King Charles III in said a statement earlier that he was “desperately shocked” by the “terrible events” following the crash of a London-bound Air India plane in Ahmedabad this morning.

“Our special prayers and deepest possible sympathy are with the families and friends of all those affected by this appallingly tragic incident across so many nations, as they await news of their loved ones,” he said.

The British monarch also paid a special tribute to the emergency services and all those involved in the rescue efforts.

Kanan Desai, a top city police officer, says that more than 200 people have died after the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad, Reuters reports.

The local police chief said at least 204 bodies had been recovered from the crash site and that they could include passengers and those who died on the ground from the collision impact.

Police said earlier that more than 100 bodies, most of them badly charred, had been brought to the local government hospital for autopsy.

The Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad said its operations had resumed, with “limited flights” now moving after it grounded all flights following the nearby crash of Flight AI171.

“Passengers are advised to check with their respective airlines for the latest updates before proceeding to the airport,” the airport spokesperson said in a statement, adding that authorities were managing the “evolving situation.”

Airport authorities added that a dedicated helpline had been set up for crash-related passenger queries and assistance at +91 99741 11327.

At the international arrivals section of London Gatwick’s south terminal, there were no immediate signs of the crash.

This is where Air India Flight 171 was scheduled to land early Thursday evening local time.

Passengers continued to stream through the arrivals gate, some of them overheard discussing the events thousands of miles away.

Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, speaking at a press briefing earlier today, said that the Air India air crash was “an evolving situation” and that rescue operations were ongoing.

“What has happened in Ahmedabad is a very tragic accident. We have lost a lot of people,” Jaiswal told reporters.

He added that further updates on the status of foreigners would come in due time from the relevant organizations, including the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Air India and others.

“Everybody is concerned, and we once again convey our deepest condolences to all the families who lost their loved ones,” he added.

Video shows the moment that Air India Flight 171 crashed near a major international airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner had over 200 people on board, including 12 crew members, and was headed to London’s Gatwick Airport.

“It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,” G.S. Malik, the police commissioner for Ahmedabad, told The Associated Press, adding that “some locals would have also died” when the plane crashed into a residential area where offices were also located.

“Exact figures on casualties are being ascertained,” he said.

The flight crashed midday local time shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport with 242 people on board.

Plane crashes are not common in India, which boasts some of the world’s strictest air standards after being rattled by a series of bombings and hijackings from the 1970s to the 1990s.

In October, the Indian government vowed to punish those responsible for flight disruptions after more than 90 flights from Indian airports received bomb threats in just over a week. They were primarily directed at Indian airlines, but they also affected international airlines.

“Safety and security is the foremost aspect,” the Indian aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, told reporters at the time.

Today’s crash comes after Air India, once state-owned, came under the control of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group in 2022. Tata chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said in a post on X that an emergency center has been activated for family members seeking information.

India has suffered more than 50 major air disasters since its independence, including a 1996 midair collision in Delhi between a Saudi Boeing 747 en route to Saudi Arabia and a Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 arriving from Kazakhstan. It is considered the worst air crash in India to date, killing 349 people.

More than 100 bodies have been brought to a hospital in the city of Ahmedabad, local police told Reuters. That came after rescuers earlier said that they had recovered between 30 and 35 bodies from the site.

The British foreign office has scrambled together crisis teams in London and Delhi to support British nationals affected by the crash of Air India Flight AI171 British Foreign Minister David Lammy said.

“My thoughts and I’m sure those of the entire house are with those who’ve been affected by the tragic plane crash in India this morning,” Lammy said as he began an address to the British Parliament on Thursday morning.

“We know that British nationals were on board and I can confirm that the FCDO [foreign office] is working urgently with local authorities to support British nationals and their families,” he added.

Air India Flight 171 from Ahmedabad, India, to London Gatwick Airport crashed moments after takeoff. The airline says 242 people were on board, including two pilots and 10 crew members. This is the first crash for a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. NBC’s Tom Costello reports for “TODAY.”

Shares of Boeing fell more than 8% in premarket trading today after Flight AI171 — a Boeing 787 — crashed in the latest such accident involving one of the aerospace giant’s aircraft.

“We are aware of initial reports and are working to gather more information,” Boeing said in a statement.

Boeing’s safety record has faced scrutiny following two fatal crashes of its 737 Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019 that led to more than 340 deaths.

The Air India flight crashed in a low-rise residential complex south of the Ahmedabad airport, according to pictures shared on X by India’s central police force.

Indian media identified it as a medical school’s residential complex.

In an image that the Indian Central Industrial Security Force posted on X, the tail of Air India Flight AI171, which is missing most of a wing, can be seen protruding from a destroyed building at the crash site. Other images showed rescuers standing next to charred wreckage and a downed tree near a residential complex.

The security force said it was carrying out rescue operations alongside local authorities and emergency services.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today that the plane crash in Ahmedabad is “heartbreaking beyond words.”

“The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,” Modi said in a post on X. “In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it.”

Modi said he has been in touch with officials who are working to assist those affected.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said “the scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating.”

In a statement, he added that he was being kept updated about the situation as it develops.

India’s Ahmedabad airport has temporarily suspended all flight operations after the crash.

“Passengers are advised to check with their respective airlines for the latest updates before proceeding to the airport,” the airport said in a post on X.

Ahmedabad airport, one of the busiest in India, handled a total of over 11 million passengers in the 2024 financial year, according to Statista.

Hospitals in the areas around the Ahmedabad airport have been put on “high alert” following the crash that happened shortly after takeoff, said Harsh Sanghavi, home minister for the state of Gujarat, where Ahmedabad is located.

Rescue teams were also dispatched to the site of the crash, he said in a post on X, adding that all ambulances, including at least 108 vehicles, stood ready to respond.

Sanghavi said senior officials had also been deployed to hospitals and to the airport to “ensure prompt action and save lives.”

India’s civil aviation minister has offered his thoughts and prayers to those on board Flight AI171 and their families.

“Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad,” Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu said in a post on X, adding that he was “personally monitoring the situation and [has] directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action.”

“Rescue teams have been mobilized, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support are being rushed to the site,” he added. “My thoughts and prayers are with all those on board and their families.”

At least 169 Indian nationals were among the 242 people on board Flight AI171 when it crashed, Air India has said.

There were also at least 53 British citizens on the flight, which was headed to London Gatwick Airport, just outside Britain’s capital.

At least seven of those on board were Portuguese nationals, along with one Canadian citizen.

Air India said the injured were being taken to the nearest hospitals and that the airline was fully cooperating with authorities in their investigation.

An Air India plane with 242 people on board crashed Thursday near a major international airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, the airline and the country’s government said.

Air India, the country’s flagship carrier, said in a post on X that Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick had been “involved in an incident” and that it was “ascertaining the details and will share further updates at the earliest.”

The flight was scheduled to depart at 1:10 p.m. local time (3:40 a.m. ET). Reuters reported that 242 people were on board and cited police in adding that the plane crashed into a civilian area.

“Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad,” Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, India’s civil aviation minister, said in a post on X. “I am personally monitoring the situation and have directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action.”

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