Air India plane crash: What we know so far

An Air India passenger jet crashed into a medical college hostel minutes after take-off near the airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on June 12. It was bound for London’s Gatwick Airport.

There were 242 people on board, including two pilots and 10 cabin crew members. Among the passengers were 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian.

There is only one known survivor of the crash, said Air India. At least 24 people died on the ground when the plane crashed into the hostel.

One video clip shows the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge jet of fire can be seen rising into the sky from beyond the houses.

The plane crash-landed on the hostel in the residential area near the airport at lunchtime on Thursday.

The aircraft had arrived in Ahmedabad from the Indian capital of New Delhi about three hours earlier and was taking off as Flight AI171 for London when it crashed.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad airport, the aircraft departed at 1.39pm local time from runway 23. It issued a mayday call shortly after, signalling an emergency, but thereafter, there was no response from the aircraft.

Mr Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was in seat 11A of the plane when it crashed. “He was near the emergency exit and managed to escape by jumping out the emergency door,” said senior police officer Vidhi Chaudhary in Ahmedabad.

Speaking from his hospital bed, the 40-year-old told Indian media that he was a British national and was travelling to Britain with his brother after visiting family in India.

“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. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital,” Mr Viswash told the Hindustan Times.

Mr Bob Mann, head of aviation consultant R.W. Mann said the Boeing 787 Dreamliner appeared to have not achieved sufficient thrust even after lumbering down nearly the full length of a 3.3km runway, a distance that should have been more than enough for take-off.

This could have stemmed from a misconfiguration of the plane prior to take-off or erroneous weight data entered into the plane’s computer system that determines how much power is needed to get off the ground, he said.

The plane’s landing gear was never retracted, noted Mr Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigation chief for the US Federal Aviation Administration. He said it was possible that plane flaps were mistakenly raised instead of the landing gear.

Other aviation experts pointed out that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is designed to be able to fly on one engine, so the most likely cause of the crash is a double engine failure.

“The most likely cause of a double engine failure is a bird strike,” said Professor Jason Knight, senior lecturer in fluid mechanics at the University of Portsmouth.

However, experts said it was still too early to tell what might have caused the crash, and that the nature of the mayday emergency transmission would be crucial information for investigators.

Currently, one of the two black boxes has been recovered, while the second - located in the front section of the aircraft - has yet to be found, according to the Hindustan Times.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service. The fleet of more than 1,100 Dreamliners have carried more than a billion passengers, according to the Chicago-based aircraft manufacturer.

Aviation professional Hemanth DP told The Straits Times that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner had a spotless record.

“If a plane of this calibre and size has to crash at such a low height of 183m minutes after take-off, it must have been a catastrophic failure,” said Mr Hemanth, chief executive of Asia Pacific Flight Training Academy in Hyderabad.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner that crash-landed had previously flown to major hubs including London, Tokyo, Dubai and Melbourne.

The plane that crashed on Thursday took flight for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in January 2014.

Since then, the plane accumulated more than 41,000 flight hours, including 420 hours from 58 flights in May and 165 hours from 21 flights in June, according to Cirium, an aviation data analytics firm, and FlightRadar24, a flight tracking website.

Over the past decade, commercial jet accidents have occurred during nearly every phase of flight, with landings accounting for the largest proportion of the total number of accidents.