What We Know About the Plane Crash in Ahmedabad, India

An Air India passenger plane carrying 242 people that was bound for London crashed in western India on Thursday, the airline said on social media.

Flight AI171, which crashed shortly after takeoff outside of the Ahmedabad airport in the state of Gujarat, was headed for London’s Gatwick Airport, Air India said.

Although exact casualty figures weren’t immediately known, the airline said that those who were injured were being taken to hospitals.

“Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad,” India’s minister of civil aviation, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, wrote on social media. “We are on highest alert.”

Where did the crash take place?

The plane crashed near the airport in the city of Ahmedabad. Air India confirmed that the flight “was involved in an accident today after takeoff.”

The plane, which Air India said was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, left the airport at 1:38 p.m. local time.

Videos shared by local media showed enormous plumes of thick black smoke billowing in the sky near the airport.

Who was on the flight?

Air India said that the plane’s 242 passengers and crew members included 169 Indians, 53 Britons, one Canadian and seven Portuguese.

What was the cause?

It was not immediately clear why the plane crashed.

What is Air India’s safety record?

Air India, the country’s flagship carrier, has worked to boost its record after a cluster of dangerous incidents about 15 years ago.

Its last major crash was in 2020, when a passenger plane from Air India Express, a subsidiary, skidded and cracked in half on a rain-soaked runway. At least 17 people died in that accident in the southern Indian state of Kerala, in which visibility was poor.

A decade earlier, in 2010, an Air India Express plane skidded off a hill in Mangalore, a city in the western state of Karnataka. It burst into flames, killing more than 150 people.

At the time, many were concerned about the safety of India’s rapidly expanding aviation sector — in 2009, there were three near-misses at the Mumbai airport — as well as concerns about Air India’s professionalism.

A plane had flown unmanned for several minutes during a scuffle between pilots and flight attendants, and another Air India plane was delayed 11 hours by a plane-wide search for rats.