
An Air India Boeing 787 aircraft travelling from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick airport on Thursday afternoon crashed shortly after takeoff. The timeline of the crash, from the plane lifting off the runway to its crash, was captured on CCTV and mobile cameras.
Surveillance footage from the airport showed the Indian airline Flight 171 taking off from the runway with 242 people, including two pilots and 10 crew members on board.
Seconds after the plane took off, it failed to maintain lift and started coming down, and eventually ended in a huge explosion when it crashed into a BJ Medical College hostel in Meghaninagar, injuring 20 students. The official number of ground fatalities has not yet been given.
Everybody in the aircraft, excluding one man, an Indian and British citizen named Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, died in the crash. Vishwas, who was seated on 11A, was travelling with his brother Ajay Kumar Ramesh, who was seated in another row.
Both siblings came to India to visit their family and were going back to the UK. Speaking with local reporters, Vishwas recalled hearing a loud noise and everybody panicking before the crash happened. He then found himself with dead bodies around him, and was found by responders when he was running away from the plane.
Video of him walking away barely hurt is all over the media. However, his brother has not been found.
Of the passengers in the ill-fated Air India, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were British, seven were Portuguese, and one was Canadian.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has ordered an investigation into the crash. He also announced that the bodies of the dead passengers have almost been recovered, and the process of DNA identification will be completed in a few hours.