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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited the site of an Air India plane crash that killed more than 200 people in the country’s worst civil aviation disaster in almost three decades.
Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said the government was launching a “fair and thorough investigation” to get to the “depth of why this incident has happened”. Air India said on Friday that it was “giving its full co-operation to the authorities”.
Video footage showed the Indian leader on Friday viewing the wreckage of the plane, including a portion of its tail, as well as damaged buildings at a medical student compound where the Boeing 787-800 Dreamliner crashed.
“The scene of devastation is saddening,” the Modi wrote in a social media post. “Our thoughts remain with those who lost their loved ones in this unimaginable tragedy.”
Air India confirmed on Friday that all but one of the 230 passengers and 12 crew on board were killed. The London-bound flight crashed on Thursday shortly after take off from Ahmedabad in western Gujarat state.
“The passengers comprised 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian national. The survivor is a British national of Indian origin,” Air India said.
Unverified videos showed the plane losing altitude shortly after take-off on Thursday, before it exploded in a fireball that left plumes of smoke billowing above houses.
ANI, a news agency close to Modi’s government, reported the prime minister also visited victims of the disaster in hospital, including the sole survivor, a British man identified by Indian officials as Viswash Kumar Ramesh, who had been seated near an emergency exit.
“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed,” Ramesh told India’s Hindustan Times newspaper. “It all happened so quickly,” he said from his hospital bed.
Forensic teams were examining wreckage overnight at the state-run BJ Medical College, which the plane hit while students were having lunch. Mangled parts of aircraft were spread across hundreds of metres.
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The Federation of All India Medical Association said up to five students were missing and another 60 injured including three in critical condition. The wife of one resident doctor was found dead, it added.
Labourers who worked near the building were also reported dead.
Home affairs minister Amit Shah said late on Thursday that authorities had retrieved most of the bodies and an official death toll would be released after the victims had been identified with DNA samples.
The crash was a major setback for flag carrier Air India, which was bought by conglomerate Tata Group in 2022. The formerly state-owned group is midway through a five-year turnaround that includes the replacement or refurbishment of its older jets.
“We have to wait and see what comes out of the black box,” said Jitender Bhargava, a former Air India executive director and author of the book The descent of Air India. “The pilots must have spoken in the cockpit before the tragedy.”
The last fatal plane crash in India, the world’s third-largest aviation market, was five years ago. A Boeing 737 from Air India Express, the airline’s low-cost unit, was landing from Dubai when it skidded off the runway in Kozhikode and plunged into a valley, killing 21 people.
Ten years earlier, another Air India Express aircraft from Dubai crashed on landing in Mangalore, killing 158.
India’s worst-ever civil aviation disaster was the 1996 mid-air collision between a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 that killed all 349 people across both aircraft.
Separately on Friday, an Air India flight from Phuket to New Delhi carrying 156 passengers made an emergency landing on the Thai island following a bomb threat received by the Royal Thai Army, the airport said.
A spokesperson for Air India said they were unable to comment on the flight specifically but, in a post on X, the airline said the plane had been diverted for “operational reasons”.
Flight trackers showed the plane made multiple loops over the Andaman Sea before returning to Phuket.
