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An Air India flight to London Gatwick has crashed in Ahmedabad in western India shortly after take-off, with 242 individuals on board.
Air India mentioned that these on the Boeing 787-8 plane included 169 Indian nationals, in addition to 53 British residents, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. There have been additionally 10 cabin crew and two pilots.
The airline gave no details about whether or not there have been any survivors.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was greater than 10 years previous, in line with Flightradar24, which added that after reaching an altitude of 625 ft, the plane started to descend with a vertical pace of 475 ft per minute.
The incident marks the primary time a 787 has crashed, in line with the Aviation Security Community database.
Boeing shares had been down 7 per cent in pre-market buying and selling on Thursday.
The group is battling to revive confidence within the security of its planes after two deadly crashes of its 737 Max plane in 2018 and 2019. Final week, it confirmed it could pay $1.1bn to keep away from prosecution over the crashes, however households of the 346 victims are preventing the settlement in court docket.
In 2024, a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airways Boeing 737 Max throughout a flight. The incident prompted an emergency touchdown, and the US Federal Aviation Administration ordered the non permanent grounding of some plane.
Boeing mentioned on Thursday: “We’re conscious of preliminary studies and are working to assemble extra data.”
Police in Gujarat state instructed the Monetary Occasions that the aircraft crashed “inside 10 minutes” of taking off from the airport in Ahmedabad.
The Indian aviation regulator mentioned the plane made a mayday name to air visitors management “however thereafter no response was given by the plane to the calls made by ATC”.
The Ahmedabad airport was subsequently closed.
Gatwick airport mentioned: “We are able to verify that flight AI171 that crashed on departure from Ahmedabad airport at this time was resulting from land at London Gatwick at 18:25.”
N Chandrasekaran, chair of Tata, which took over the airline from state management in 2022, mentioned: “With profound sorrow I verify that Air India Flight 171 working Ahmedabad London Gatwick was concerned in a tragic accident at this time.”
Tata had promised to modernise the provider, and, in 2023, Air India agreed a take care of Boeing and Airbus to purchase 470 new plane, one of many largest orders in aviation historical past.
Campbell Wilson, the airline’s chief govt, instructed the FT in 2023 that the modernisation plan was “the most important aviation turnaround . . . that I’m ever conscious of”.
