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Flight was bound for London's Gatwick Airport

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Police say plane crashed on doctors' hostel

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More than 240 dead, police say

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Airline confirms one passenger survived

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First fatal crash of Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner

(Adds new details about Boeing ( BA ) assisting with crash

investigation in paragraphs 27-28)

By Sumit Khanna, Shivam Patel and Aditi Shah

AHMEDABAD, India, June 12 (Reuters) - More than 240

people were killed when an Air India plane bound for London

crashed moments after taking off from the city of Ahmedabad on

Thursday, authorities said, in the world's worst aviation

disaster in a decade.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, with 242 people on board, which

was headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital,

had only one survivor after it crashed onto a medical college

hostel during lunch hour.

The sole survivor is a British national of Indian origin and is

being treated in a hospital, the airline confirmed. The man told

Indian media how he had heard a loud noise shortly after Flight

AI171 took off.

"We are still verifying the number of dead, including those

killed in the building where the plane crashed," Vidhi

Chaudhary, a top state police officer, told Reuters.

She said the death toll was more than 240, revising down a

previous toll of 294 as it included body parts that had been

double counted. It was not immediately clear how many of the

dead had been on the aircraft or on the ground.

The only known surviving passenger was in seat 11A, next to

an emergency exit, Chaudhary said, adding that there could be

more survivors in hospital.

"Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and

then the plane crashed," 40-year-old Ramesh Viswashkumar told

the Hindustan Times, which showed a boarding pass for seat 11A

in that name online.

"It all happened so quickly," he told the paper from his

hospital bed.

"When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was

scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all

around me," he said. "Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in

an ambulance and brought me to the hospital."

He said that his brother, Ajay, was seated in a different

row on the plane. "He was travelling with me and I can't find

him anymore. Please help me find him," he said.

Ahmedabad police chief G.S. Malik said the bodies recovered

could include both passengers and people killed on the ground.

The dead included Vijay Rupani, the former chief minister of

Gujarat state, of which Ahmedabad is the main city.

Relatives have been asked to give DNA samples to identify

the dead, state health secretary Dhananjay Dwivedi said.

Parts of the plane's fuselage were scattered around the

smouldering building into which it crashed. The tail of the

plane was stuck on top of the building.

The passengers included 217 adults, 11 children and two

infants, a source told Reuters. Air India said 169 were Indian

nationals, 53 were Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian.

It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, a wide-body airliner

that began flying commercially in 2011, according to the

Aviation Safety Network database. The plane that crashed on

Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to

Air India in January 2014, Flightradar24 said.

CRASH JUST AFTER TAKE-OFF

CCTV footage showed the plane taking off over a residential

area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge

fireball could be seen rising into the sky from beyond the

houses.

"My sister-in-law was going to London. Within an hour, I got

news that the plane had crashed," Poonam Patel, a relative of

one of the passengers, told news agency ANI at the government

hospital in Ahmedabad.

Ramila, the mother of a student at the medical college, told

ANI her son had gone to the hostel for his lunch break when the

plane crashed. "My son is safe, and I have spoken to him. He

jumped from the second floor, so he suffered some injuries," she

said.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad Airport, the

aircraft departed at 1:39 p.m. (0809 GMT). It made a Mayday

call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter there was no

response from the aircraft.

U.S. aerospace safety consultant Anthony Brickhouse said one

problematic sign from videos of the aircraft was that the

landing gear was down at a phase of flight when it would

typically be up.

"If you didn't know what was happening, you would think that

plane was on approach to a runway," Brickhouse said.

Indian Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said that a

formal investigation has been initiated by the Aircraft Accident

Investigation Bureau.

"The government is constituting a high-level committee

comprising experts from multiple disciplines to examine the

matter in detail," he added.

Boeing ( BA ) CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a note to employees

that was seen by Reuters that he and the head of Boeing's ( BA )

commercial airplane division had cancelled plans to attend next

week's Paris Air Show, the industry's biggest event of the year.

Before Thursday's crash, Ortberg was heading to Paris

having made considerable progress on his efforts to rebuild

trust in the company following multiple

production and safety crises

in recent years.

Now, a team of Boeing ( BA ) experts is ready to go to India to

help investigators there, he said.

Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the investigation

would take time and expressed "deep sorrow" about the incident.

Boeing's ( BA ) shares fell 5% in the crash's wake.

Aircraft engine-maker GE Aerospace said that it would put a

team together to go to India and analyse cockpit data, India's

CNBC TV18 reported.

The U.S. transportation secretary said the Federal Aviation

Administration was working with Boeing ( BA ) and GE in the

investigation.

Britain was also working with Indian authorities to

establish the facts around the crash and to provide support to

those involved, the country's foreign office said.

"The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,"

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. "It is

heartbreaking beyond words." Gujarat is Modi's home state.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said images of the crash

were "devastating". A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said King

Charles was also being kept updated.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the crash "terrible".

INDIA'S FIRST CRASH SINCE 2020

Ahmedabad Airport, which suspended all flight operations

after the crash, said it was operational again but with limited

flights. The airport is operated by India's Adani Group

conglomerate.

The last fatal plane crash in India, the world's third largest

aviation market and its fastest growing, was in 2020 and

involved Air India Express, the airline's low-cost arm.

The airline's Boeing ( BA )-737 overshot a "table-top" runway in

southern India, skidded and plunged into a valley, crashing

nose-first into the ground and killing 21 people.

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.

($1 = 85.5420 Indian rupees)