An Air India passenger plane carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, soon after departing for London’s Gatwick airport, the airline and officials said.
A senior police official initially told The Associated Press there were no known survivors from the crash of Air India flight AI171. Later, however, two officials said one man who had been on the plane survived and was being treated at a hospital. Officials also feared numerous casualties on the ground, as the aircraft had crashed into buildings.
Air India said the plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, departed at 1:38 p.m. local time carrying 242 people, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian.
Ajit Solanki /AP
“Investigations will take time, but anything we can do now, we are doing,” Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said in a video statement on Thursday. “We understand that people are eager for information. Please know that we will continue to share accurate and timely information as soon as we can, but anything we report must be accurate and not speculative. We owe that to everyone involved. For now, our teams are working around the clock to support passengers, crew and their families — as well as investigators — however we can.”
Wilson said the airline was sending a “a special team of caregivers” to Ahmedabad to provide support.
Gatwick Airport, which is just south of London, said the plane had been due to land there at 6:25 p.m. local time (1:25 p.m. Eastern).
“It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,” the AP quoted Ahmedabad Police Commissioner G.S. Malik as saying. “As the plane has fallen in a residential area which also had offices, some locals would have also died.”
Malik was later quoted by India’s national news agency ANI as saying there was one survivor found on the plane, but there was no further confirmation from the airline. A health department official also said there was one survivor, the AFP news agency reported.
A spokesperson for Boeing told CBS News the company was “in contact with Air India regarding Flight 171 and stand ready to support them. Our thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders and all affected.”
The incident was the first of its kind for the 787-8 Dreamliner, according to Boeing’s April 2025 statistical summary of incidents involving its aircraft.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it would “be leading a team of U.S. investigators traveling to India to assist the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau with its investigation into the crash.”
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said India’s government would lead the investigation, but added that it was “ready to launch a team immediately in coordination with the NTSB” if required.
Unverified video shared online by Indian network NDTV purportedly shows the passenger jet flying low over buildings before disappearing behind them. There is then a large explosion. No fire or explosion can be seen on the aircraft before it disappears.
Part of the plane hit the dining area of B.J. Medical College and killed at least five medical students, Divyansh Singh, vice president of the Federation of All India Medical Association, told the AP. He said nearly 50 people who had been in the building were injured.
“Some of the injured are critical. We are in close contact with our peers in the hospital who are on a lookout for more people feared buried in the debris,” he said.
India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani was among those killed in the plane crash.
“He will be remembered as a grassroots leader who devoted his life for the development & welfare of his state,” Singh said in a statement on social media.
The head of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, told the AP that flight AI171 crashed five minutes after taking off. Live flight tracking website Flight Radar said a final signal was received from Flight AI171 just seconds after it took off. The flight path on Flight Radar showed the aircraft traveling southwest from the airport a short distance before the path stopped, and the site said initial data showed the aircraft reached a maximum barometric altitude of 625 feet before it started to descend.
“At this point, it’s very, very, very early, we don’t know a whole lot,” Aviation consultant John M. Cox told the AP. “But the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring — the parameters on the flight data recorder are in the thousands — so once we get that recorder, they’ll be able to know pretty quickly what happened.”
Ajit Solanki/AP 
The Indian Army said it had deployed at least 130 personnel, including doctors and paramedics, to assist civil authorities in combing through the debris and helping to treat the injured, the AP reported.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “the tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us. It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it. Have been in touch with Ministers and authorities who are working to assist those affected.”
“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.