Rescue workers in India were searching for survivors Thursday after a plane carrying 242 people crashed shortly after takeoff into a building where medical students were sitting down to lunch.
The police commissioner for the city of Ahmedabad said none of those aboard the London-bound Air India plane survived the crash. But local media reported that one man was able to escape the airliner alive. The British national, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, told Indian media that “it all happened so quickly.”
“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed,” he told The Hindustan Times. NBC News confirmed that Ramesh’s name and seat number, reported in local media, match the flight manifest. His family confirmed to Sky News that he survived the flight, though they had not heard from another family member whom they believe was on the plane.
Relatives of those who were aboard the Boeing 787 Dreamliner waited at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad and Gatwick Airport outside of London for word of their loved ones. G.S. Malik, the Ahmedabad police commissioner, said “some locals would have also died” when the plane crashed into a residential area where offices were located.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on X that it was sending a team of investigators to assist the Indian authorities probing the first-ever crash of this kind of Boeing airliner.
Footage posted to social media shortly after the crash and verified by NBC News showed plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the ruins of a building to the south of the airport.
Kanan Desai, a top city police official, told Reuters that 204 bodies had so far been recovered from the crash site and brought to local hospitals. That figure could also include those who died on the ground from the impact, he added.
The plane’s tail could be seen protruding from the wall of a building in a picture from the crash site shared on X by India’s central police force. Other images showed rescuers standing next to charred wreckage and a downed tree near a residential complex.
The plane was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members, a spokesperson for the airline told NBC News.
Among the passengers were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals, the airline said in a separate statement. “The injured are being taken to the nearest hospitals,” it added.
The airline did not provide nationalities of the crew members.
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