265 dead in Air India crash, 1 survivor; PM to visit accident site today
In one of the deadliest aviation disasters in recent history, at least 265 people were killed when an Air India flight bound for London crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon.The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plummeted right into a medical college hostel, sparking a massive blaze and leaving only one survivor among the 242 on board. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to arrive in Ahmedabad today to inspect the crash site and visit the Civil Hospital, where the injured are receiving treatment.AIR INDIA PLANE CRASH: 10 POINTS
advertisementThe ill-fated Flight AI171 was headed for London's Gatwick Airport when it went down in the densely populated Meghaninagar residential area, just minutes after lifting off. Footage captured by a bystander showed the aircraft losing altitude as it struggled to gain lift before erupting into a fireball upon impact.
"This looks like a complete failure of both the engines from providing enough thrust for the aircraft to take off," said @AeroFaizan#planecrash #AirIndia #AirIndiaPlaneCrash #NewsToday | @sardesairajdeep pic.twitter.com/7zzNGgxwSB
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) June 12, 2025
There were 169 Indians, 53 British nationals, 7 Portuguese and a Canadian among the 230 passengers on board, along with 12 crew members. Among those killed was former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani. Only one man made it out alive -- Vishwaskumar Ramesh, a passenger seated in 11A. He is receiving treatment at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.
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The plane crashed into the hostel block of a medical college during lunchtime, increasing casualties on the ground. A massive multi-agency rescue operation involving the Army, NDRF, CISF, and local fire services was launched.
Rescue workers said temperatures at the crash site reached 1,000 degrees Celsius due to the explosion of over 1.25 lakh litres of jet fuel. Union Home Minister Amit Shah said it was "impossible to save anyone" due to the intensity of the blaze.
Biggest Aviation Tragedy | Key takeaways from HM Amit Shah's statement:
ðFinal toll after DNA test determination
ðPM immediately called me and took stock.
ðI have met the crash survivor. #planecrash #AirIndia #AirIndiaPlaneCrash #NewsToday | @sardesairajdeep pic.twitter.com/bD3iekLR3p
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) June 12, 2025
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the incident "stunning and saddening" and directed Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu to oversee support operations. PM Modi is expected to travel to Ahmedabad today and review the on-ground situation.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation said the aircraft sent a Mayday call moments before losing contact. A formal probe has been launched by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau under ICAO protocols.
The tragedy marks the first-ever crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a model introduced into commercial service in 2011. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg expressed condolences and said a team of technical experts would be sent to assist with the investigation.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the Foreign Secretary is coordinating with Indian authorities in the probe. US President Donald Trump also offered to help India following the "horrific" plane crash, saying, "Anything we can do, we will do."
Air India's Parent company Tata Group announced Rs 1 crore compensation for the families of those killed, full medical expense coverage for the injured, and assistance to rebuild the impacted medical college infrastructure.
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India Today
an hour ago
- India Today
Vadaami Sanskritam Sadaa, Do You? Start speaking the language of Gods
"Tat vyajanam, etat karadipam," the man says repeatedly, pointing first to the ceiling fan above and then to a tiny torch in his 15-20 people in the audience, ages ranging from 5 years to 75, nod. Each of them, in turn, points to the two objects and says, "Tat vyajanam, etat karadipam.""That is a fan, this is a handheld torch." Most have understood what the two objects are called in Sanskrit. They also get the idea of 'tat' ('that', not much different) and 'etat' ('this'). (Those were neuter nouns; for masculine nouns it would be "sah" and 'eshah', whereas for feminine ones it would be "sa" and "esha".) Most of them have also realised that they are going to learn Sanskrit through that language itself. Bringing in a second language and using translation does not help the The class goes on for about two hours. It begins with one or two of the four songs in the handout – Shibiragitam, Uddeshyagitam, Ekatamantrah and Sankalpah. Then come short conversations ("Bhavatah naam kim?"). Various concepts like numbers and tense are introduced are the scenes from a 10-day conversational Sanskrit workshop, taking place in the basement of a society flat in east Delhi. It is one of the 1,008 organised across Delhi in April-May by Samskrit Bharati, a not-for-profit Bharati, a movement dedicated to reviving Sanskrit and the cultural knowledge rooted in it, began in Bengaluru in 1981. The organisation claims it has trained over 1 crore people through 1.2 lakh workshops and prepared more than 1.35 lakh participants at the East Delhi workshop pose questions in Hindi, but the teacher prefers to answer in Sanskrit with gestures that help in full class ends with the teacher narrating a short, Panchatantra-like tale, in simple Sanskrit from the beginning to the end. Most are able to follow it. It is no small wonder how quickly they have been able to live inside a supposedly dead language – at least for a couple of hours a TO REVIVE SANSKRIT"Our Mission: Reviving a language, rejuvenating a culture, rebuilding a nation that is Bharat! Samskrit Bharati is a movement for the continuing protection, development and propagation of the Sanskritam language as well as the literature, tradition and the knowledge systems embedded in it," says the website of Samskrit has been working to present the vast knowledge available in Sanskrit to the world and to train and enable millions of people to speak and learn Sanskrit, as Home Minister Amit Shah noted in his address at the concluding ceremony at the Delhi University sports complex on May movement began when Chamu Krishna Shastry and his friends, including Janardan Hegde and Vishwas Mahodaya, started organising small workshops in Bengaluru in 1980-81. Shastry, honoured with Padma Shri in 2017, developed a teaching methodology called 'Saral Sambhashan Paddhati', focusing on teaching everyday conversational to its efforts, there are more than 6,000 homes in which Sanskrit is spoken. The organisation also says it has transformed four villages into "Samskrit Grams". It propagates Sanskrit through 4,500 centres across 26 countries too. It also organised a first-of-its-kind World Samskrit Book Fair in Bengaluru in 2011 and a Sanskrit literature festival in Ujjain in the latest round of the 1,008 free-of-charge workshops in the national capital, more than 17,000 participants were introduced to Sanskrit over a 10-day period starting on April GRAMMAR BUGBEARFor most learners of a new language, grammar is a major may not be apparent in a language like English, at least initially, but in classical languages such as Sanskrit as well as Greek and Latin, there are declensions – those tags at the end of the noun or verb to indicate tense or number (singular/plural) or Sanskrit and the first memory most of us have is of trying to memorise those tables: ramah-ramau-ramah and so on for seven vibhaktis, that is, the seven kinds of roles a noun may play in a sentence, for example, as subject or you have 21 different forms for one one table. That will do for the masculine nouns ending in an 'a'.There's a different table for aa-ending nouns, ee-ending ones and so on, and then all of it for feminine and neuter genders too. Unlike most languages, Sanskrit has a dual number too apart from the usual singular and plural, 'the two of us', adding slight complication to it you can say who did what to whom where and why, you have to figure out the vibhakti of each noun, then mentally check the table and then form the sentence. That won't be a complete sentence, though. At the heart of any sentence is the verb, the action or what exactly is happening. And the verbs in Sanskrit have their own suffixes, the end tags called conjugations. You may vaguely remember them:Vadami-Vadavah-VadamahVadasi-Vadathah-VadathaVadati-Vadatah-VadantiThis works for simple present tense. There are 10 tenses in Sanskrit. Then there are 10 different verb classes. So you have at least a hundred conjugation is a rather simple language. Being used by more and more people, it has become simpler. "I ran, you ran and everybody ran." Not so in many other a paper, CW Huntington, Jr, a well-known scholar, recalled a train journey from Delhi to Varanasi many decades ago, during which he kept reading 'Rupachandrika'."The book has been my constant companion for years. Six hundred pages of Sanskrit grammar, six hundred closely lined pages of declensions and conjugations that must be committed to memory."French learners also carry with them for years a 174-page book, 'Bescherelle', of conjugation tables, but, and this is crucial, native speakers never need it. As the joke goes, someone trying to learn French goes to Paris and is surprised to see 'even small children speaking fluently in French".Unlike the learner, they learn the language naturally. They didn't have to consciously consult those tables before forming a sentence. For an adult learner, it would be somewhat like picking up conversational Marathi or Kannada after living in Mumbai or Bengaluru for a while. In Samskrit Bharati workshops, students are provided with tools to learn Sanskrit at several levels. (Image: Ashish Mehta) advertisementTHE NATURAL WAY OF LEARNING A LANGUAGEThe immersive language learning technique bypasses the grammar mode and seeks to replicate the way children learn their mother Samskrit Bharati workshops, the teacher begins with a short sentence: "Mama naamah Rajeshah", indicating himself, and then asks one of the participants: "Bhavatah naama kim?" Most get it and respond with 'Mama namah Rameshah'. If the visarga, '-ah' at the end, is left out, the teacher corrects, and others get the he turns to a woman and asks, 'Bhavatyaha naama kim?' For feminine there's a small change at the beginning in the question and the name in answer won't take the visarga. 'Mama naama Smita.'To this humble beginning, other building blocks of the language are added, but only a few per next day, participants enter the basement brimming with the confidence of holding at least a couple of lines of conversation in the language that they didn't know beyond some mantras and shlokas meant for religious seen above is introduced in the class, but only conversationally, without bringing in the rest of the table. Soon past tense and future tense are also introduced in similar from numbers, they learn time telling and the days of the week. (It goes like the famous 'The Godfather' scene albeit in Sanskrit: Adya Ravivaasarah, Shvah Somavaasarah, Parashvah Mangalavaasarah, Praparashvah Budhavaasarah, Hya Shanivaasarah)Importantly, participants do not need to bring any pen and notebook. Think of it as taking a stroll in the market in a Sanskrit-speaking town. By the tenth day, they are ready to write in Sanskrit, for example, the script of a five-minute play or a short narrative of their learning LEARN SANSKRIT?Why do they wish to learn a language that has virtually no practical usage? Some learners wish to learn the language of their religion; some are inspired by the rise of Hindu pride and identity."I want to chant mantras, stotras and shlokas with full understanding and better pronunciation," says an elderly gentleman."I want to help my school-going daughters in their Sanskrit lessons," says a middle-aged woman, who happens to be a higher-secondary Sanskrit teacher, says she wants to learn this novel method, which is very different from classroom teaching. Youngsters, meanwhile, are here to either supplement their school-time Sanskrit studies or to get an idea of this subject as a future why do the teachers wish to teach a language that seems to have few takers?Rajesh Sharma, the teacher for this workshop in East Delhi, hails from Himachal Pradesh, has a whole range of degrees in Sanskrit, and has been teaching in Samskrit Bharati shivirs for 22 years now – he has lost count of how many workshops he has taught. A Samskrit Bharati workshop in the basement of a society flat in East Delhi, led by teacher Rajesh Sharma. (Image: Ashish Mehta) He says Sanskrit is the mother of most of our mother tongues and it is our duty to have at least some acquaintance with it. Moreover, he says, Sanskrit forms the basis of our culture and heritage."Our aim is to encourage learners to develop a curiosity for Sanskrit language. We provide an introduction to the language,' Sharma says.?WHAT NEXTAfter the tenth day, if practice is not continued, most of the learning could be wiped off in even less participants can then coordinate weekly meetings or at least continue WhatsApp chats – in more serious students, Samskrit Bharati also offers a variety of in-depth courses, including ones through is also an innovative residential 'Samvadashala', in New Delhi and Varanasi, in which participants spend two weeks immersed in Sanskrit, conducting daily activities in Sanskrit. They are also taught in the usual busyness of life, not many students can continue to practice what they learnt in the the years, how many of them might have actually continued speaking in Sanskrit?Numbers do not matter, says Sharma."Suppose we teach a hundred people, and only ten of them may continue sincere studies. But the rest to have acquired some knowledge of the language, and one day they run into someone who says, 'Bhavatah naam kim?' and they start responding.'SANSKRIT FOR ALLAt a time when Sanskrit faces the risk of being reduced to a mere political symbol, with strident calls being made to make it compulsory in schools, a conversational Sanskrit course may look like an offshoot of the same many Samskrit Bharati teachers and coordinators are also associated with the RSS. There is no formal link between the two, but the RSS may be expected to lend a helping hand when needed. Samskrit Bharati, on its part, works towards language promotion classes do commence with a Sarasvati all communities have been drawn to these classes. In many states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, course coordinators include Christians and Muslims. It's about the language and not the religious Krishna Shastry, the originator of the movement, says on his website that he "not only believes that Samskrit belongs to all irrespective of caste, gender, region or religion but has also worked for social harmony by conducting Samskrita Sambhashana Shibiram in slums and colonies exclusively for the neglected sections of the society who were deprived of learning Samskrit for long".
Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
‘No AC, no communication': Passengers sweat through Jaipur-Dubai Air India flight as AC fails, no response from crew
A video from inside a Jaipur-Dubai Air India flight, showing passengers slamming the airline over air conditioning failure, has caught the Internet's attention. Shared by Aarzoo Sethi, content creator, the video captures several passengers fanning themselves throughout the flight. The video begins with Sethi slamming the crew for not responding to the passengers, and then goes on to show her son, along with several other passengers, drenched in sweat. As the video progresses, she captures her fellow passengers slamming the airline while fanning themselves with the safety instructions cards. Many turned on their call bells at the same time. 'It's 12.30 AM, and there is no accountability. Look at the situation here,' Sethi says in the video. 'We were stranded inside an @airindiax flight for 5+ hours, Flight number Ix196 with no AC, no communication, and zero assistance from the crew. All our co-passengers were distressed, sweating in the heat, with no clarity on what was happening. After the Ahmedabad flight incident, this felt even more terrifying. How can the same issues be repeated without accountability?' Sethi wrote in the caption. Tagging Air India, Sethi said, 'This is a serious safety lapse. Please take responsibility for your passengers' well-being before it's too late.' Watch the video here: A post shared by Aarzoo Sethi (@dietnaree) The video quickly gained traction, with over 16 million views. Several social media users raised concerns over the passengers' safety. 'This is horrifying!!' a user wrote. Vrinda, a flight attendant, responded to the video, highlighting the safety reasons behind the unresponsive crew even though passengers turned on the call bells. 'When the seatbelt sign is on, we as crew aren't allowed to get up due to safety reasons, especially if there's turbulence. We do see the call bells, but we can only attend to them once it's safe for us to move around. It's not that we're ignoring anyone, it's just about keeping everyone, including us, safe. During this time, even though we notice the call bells, we are legally and safety wise not allowed to walk around the cabin unless there is a medical emergency,' she wrote.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Aviation expert mentions possible reasons for the Ahmedabad crash, says Boeing 787 Dreamliner is reliable
Alok Singh, retired Captain and aviation expert, attributed the Air India plane crash, which claimed the lived of 241 people, attributed the tragic incident to loss of thrust on both engines, bird strike, pilot error, or technical fault. Alok Singh told ANI, "This is a very tragic incident. It will be marked as Black Day in world aviation industry. This is the rarest of rare incident. From the video it is clear that the aircraft stopped producing lift. The reason for this could be loss of thrust on both engines which could have happened due to fuel starvation, engine could have stopped getting fuel. A bird strike is also a possibility. This can also be a pilot error. It can also be a technical fault." Singh said the black box, which was found on Friday, would be crucial. It records crucial data and cockpit conversations. He explained that the data from the black box would be analysed to determine the exact cause of the crash. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Bank Owned Properties For Sale In Tan Thoi Hoa (Prices May Surprise You) Foreclosed Homes | Search ads Search Now Undo "The black box is so strong that it can withstand an explosion also. Black box has two components one is the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) all the communications in the cockpit can be recorded and the second is the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFTR). In DFTR in which all the parameters of the aircraft are recorded. First, the data will be derived from the black box, and then it will be analysed. It just provides the data. Then, investigative agencies will analyse the data and come to conclusion," he said. Meanwhile, Singh praised the reliability of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, noting that this is the first major incident involving the aircraft. He talked about the aircraft's good safety record, with only minor issues reported due to aging fleet. Live Events "In the last 11 to 12 years, it has been in service and no such incident took place. Recently, there were reports that as the fleet is ageing, some minor issues are arising," he said. Further, Singh praised the the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu for their surveillance initiatives, ensuring that all parameters of the aircraft are checked twice to guarantee passenger safety. He said that the aviation industry learns from each accident and takes steps to prevent similar incidents in the future. He also explained the significance of the Mayday call, an international distress signal that prioritises emergency landings. "All the parameters of the aircraft before releasing to service, they want to make sure that the passengers are safe and the aircraft is safe. All the systems are checked twice so that such incident is not repeated. This is a white body aircraft and used on long-haul routes. It is called a workhorse for Air India. So far, technical glitches have been very few in it," he further said. "Whenever any accident happens in the aviation industry, we learn from it. We try to see that the mistake is not repeated. When we are announcing Mayday we are declaring emergency and help is required. ATC gives priority to such flights for landing or air space. In US and Europe aircraft are landed properly after mayday call," he added. Singh said that there are more than 200 computers monitoring a single aircraft. "Whatever has happened took place after the take off was initiated. It happened at very less height. The total flight was total 57 seconds and stalled after 26 second. The pilot had no option. The flight crashed into the nearest building," he added. On Thursday, the Air India flight AI171 was en route to London from Ahmedabad when it crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport, ramming into a doctors' hostel of BJ Medical College in Gujarat's Ahmedabad. There were 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, including 230 passengers and 12 crew members. Of the passengers, 241 died in the crash. The lone survivor, identified as Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a British national of Indian origin, sustained injuries and is undergoing treatment.
