Air India Dreamliner Crashes Into Ahmedabad College Hostel, Kills Over 290

More than 290 people were killed when an Air India plane bound for London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, authorities said, in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.

The dead included people on the ground as the aircraft – headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital – crashed on to a medical college hostel during lunch hour.

At least one passenger is known to have survived, police said, and the man told Indian media how he had heard a loud noise shortly after take-off.

“Approximately 294 have died. This includes some students as the plane crashed on the building where they were staying,” Vidhi Chaudhary, a top state police officer, told Reuters.

She said police found one survivor who was in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, 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 had been asked to give DNA samples to identify the dead, state health secretary Dhananjay Dwivedi told reporters.