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Air India plane crash: CCTV footage shows bone-chilling video of fatal incident
The video shows the aircraft taking off from the runway, gaining altitude briefly before descending sharply, crashing, and erupting into a fireball.
A CCTV footage has captured the harrowing moment an Air India flight took off from Ahmedabad airport before crashing into a student hostel shortly after.
The video shows the aircraft taking off from the runway, gaining altitude briefly before descending sharply, crashing, and erupting into a fireball. Thick black smoke rose into the sky afterwards. Follow LIVE updates here.
Air India said that the flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8, crashed into a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad minutes after taking off.
According to Air India, the Boeing aircraft had 242 passengers and crew members. Of the total passengers onboard, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, 1 Canadian national, and 7 Portuguese nationals.
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Ahmedabad city police commissioner G S Malik said that 204 bodies have been recovered from the site of the accident.
What we know about the crash
As reported by Hindustan Times, the plane took off at 1:39pm and made a “Mayday” call just minutes later, signalling an emergency. It did not respond thereafter.
According to Flightradar24, the Air India flight lost signal at 08:08 UTC (13:38 IST), less than a minute after takeoff, at an altitude of just 625 feet. “The aircraft reached a maximum barometric altitude of 625 feet (airport altitude is about 200 feet) and then it started to descend with a vertical speed of -475 feet per minute,” Flightradar24 said.
The aircraft was under the command of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kundar. Captain Sumeet Sabharwal had 8,200 hours of flying experience, and the co-pilot had 1,100 hours of flying experience.
It is the first such crash in India since 2020 when an Air India Express plane overshot a tabletop runway at Kerala’s Kozhikode, skidded off the runway, plunged into a valley nose-first, leaving 21 passengers dead.
