Flight 171 was headed from Ahmedabad, in the north-west Indian state of Gujarat, to London Gatwick Airport on Thursday. But it struggled to climb above the runway before crashing into a doctors’ hostel, killing almost everyone on board and some in the building, according to flight records, comments from officials and video footage.
Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik initially said there appeared to be no survivors before relaying the story of the British man, who the Hindustan Times named as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh.
“The police found one survivor in seat 11A. He has been in the hospital and is under treatment,” Malik said.
“Cannot say anything about the number of deaths yet. The death toll may increase as the flight crashed in a residential area.”
The Hindustan Times published a photo of Ramesh’s boarding pass and quoted him saying there was a loud noise 30 seconds after take-off and the plane crashed.
“When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran,” he told the newspaper.
“There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.”
The Londoner of 20 years reportedly suffered “impact injuries” to his chest, eyes and feet and was looking for his brother, Ajay Kumar Ramesh, who he said was sitting in a different row.
“We visited Diu,” he said, referring to a coastal town about 300 kilometres south-west of Ahmedabad.
“He was travelling with me and I can’t find him anymore. Please help me find him.”
Air India said flight 171 departed Ahmedabad International Airport at 1.38pm local time (6.08pm AEST) on Thursday carrying 242 passengers and crew members, including 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.
Ramesh’s relatives told Sky News UK he was on board the flight.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is from Gujarat, called the crash “heartbreaking beyond words”.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was “absolutely devastating” and King Charles said he was “desperately shocked”.
Divyansh Singh, vice president of the Federation of All India Medical Association, a national body that represents resident doctors, said at least five students from the medical college were killed on the ground and 50 others were injured.
Singh said some of them were in critical condition and many people were “feared buried in the debris.”
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons, which owns Air India said it would give 1 crore rupees ($179,147) to the family of each person who died and cover medical expenses for the injured.
“No words can adequately express the grief we feel at this moment,” he said.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost their loved ones, and with those who have been injured.”
This is the first crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. Boeing said it was “working to gather more information”.
India’s aviation regulatory body said the aircraft gave a mayday call, signalling an emergency, but then did not respond to the calls made by the airport traffic control.
Aviation consultant John M Cox, the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, told the AP from Los Angeles that while the first images of the crash were poor, it appeared the aircraft had its nose up and was not climbing, which is one of the things that investigators would look at.
“At this point, it’s very, very, very early; we don’t know a whole lot,” he said.
“But the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring — the parameters on the flight data recorder are in the thousands — so once we get that recorder, they’ll be able to know pretty quickly what happened.”
– Reported with Associated Press
