Terrifying final seconds of flight AI171: How doomed London-bound Air India jet plummeted having climbed to just 436ft with pilot making desperate Mayday call before slamming into medical school, splitting in two and exploding

Daily Mail​

a day ago

Inside the cockpit of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, the two pilots may have already known that they were doomed to die.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, and co-pilot Clive Kundar, still following protocol, and perhaps out of sheer desperation, issued the mayday call.
Their efforts were in vain, though. The London-bound plane they were flying, carrying 242 souls, hit a building just a mile ahead of the end of the runway and split into two in a violent smash.
Witnesses of the deadly crash could do nothing but watch in horror as a fireball, fuelled by enough kerosene to carry a plane from the Indian city of Ahmedabad to London Gatwick on a non-stop nine hour and 50 minute journey, towered above them.
As plumes of acrid, black smoke billowed above Ahmedabad today, horror spread across the city after people realised that a plane had crashed into the dense residential area of Meghani Nagar less than a minute after taking off from a nearby airport.
That horror quickly spread around the world, after it was revealed that onboard the London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese people and one Canadian.
There appears to be just one survivor of the crash, a 40-year-old British man called Vishwash Kumar Ramesh.
As emergency services continue to scour the area, treating anyone injured by the crash, investigators are still working out exactly how it all went wrong for flight AI171.
What is known so far is that it happened just seconds into a nearly 10-hour non-stop flight to London Gatwick.
At 1.30pm local time (9am BST), the Dreamliner, which can carry up to 248 passengers, was sat stationary on Ahmedabad International Airport's single 11,500ft long runway.
Data from FlightRadar24 showed that about a minute later, the 186ft-long plane, which entered service in 2011, began taxiing, turning round onto the runway at a rate of five knots (5.7mph). The plane, which has a range of 8,406 miles and a maximum takeoff weight of 502,500lbs, began accelerating, reaching a speed of ten knots within three minutes before taking off.
At 1.38pm local time, it suddenly climbed to a height above ground of 436ft and was recorded travelling at 174knots.
Experts have said that this height is far below the standard for commercial aircraft taking off.
Lieutenant Colonel John R. Davidson, a retired former U.S. Air Force pilot, said: 'AI171 appears to have reached takeoff speed — but not altitude. To be at 625 feet at over 170 knots more than four minutes after rolling out is highly irregular. This suggests either a very late rotation or a stall shortly after takeoff.'
Suddenly, it all goes wrong for the souls aboard the Dreamliner.
Data revealed that the plane began descending at a rate of 475ft per minute.
At this rate, the plane's fall would have covered a football field in less than a minute.
And its unusually low flying height meant that the crash, which happened less than a minute after takeoff, was perhaps inevitable.
Even so, the plane's highly-experienced pilot issued a mayday call to no avail.
Video footage of the moments before the crash showed it careening downwards.
The nose of the plane appeared to be rising, perhaps indicating that the pilot was desperately trying to get the plane to fly upwards.
But tragically, these efforts were in vain. The plane was split in two as it clipped a building.
The front end carried on, skidding across a dense residential area before a massive fireball was seen rising into the air.
A medic described how the burning plane had smashed into a residential block that is home to medical students and young doctors.
'One half of the plane crashed into the residential building where doctors lived with their families,' said Krishna, a doctor who gave only one name, adding he saw 'about 15-20 burnt bodies' in the wreckage and debris.
'The nose and front wheel landed on the canteen building where students were having lunch,' he said, adding he and colleagues had 'rescued some 15 students from the building and sent them to hospital'.
'When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames,' resident Poonam Patni told AFP.
A video posted to social media appeared to show the plane descending in a controlled manner with a high nose angle and landing gear deployed
'Many of the bodies were burned', she added.
Another resident, who declined to be named, said: 'We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames.
'We helped people get out of the building and sent the injured to the hospital.'
At the crash site, firefighters were seen trying to control flames on the burning plane debris that also charred nearby trees.
One video, from social media but posted by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency, showed what appeared to be a chunk of fuselage - larger than a car - that had smashed onto the roof of a multi-storey building.
Photographs released by India's Central Industrial Security Force, a paramilitary police force, showed a large chunk of the plane that had smashed through the brick and concrete wall of a building.
'I was at home when we heard a massive sound,' one Ahmedabad resident told local media.
'When we went out to see what had happened, there was a layer of thick smoke in the air. When we came here, dead bodies and debris from the crashed aircraft were scattered all over.'
Rescuers work at the site of an airplane that crashed in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, Thursday, June 12, 2025
Outside Ahmedabad airport, a woman wailing inconsolably in grief said that five of her relatives had been aboard the plane.
Officials have reported that at least five medical students have been killed, while around 50 more have been injured.
Divyansh Sing, vice-president of the Federaion of All India Medical Association, a national body that represents resident doctors across the country, said: '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.'
Investigators are still working to determine exactly why and how this tragedy happened.
Experts have so far said that there could be a range of causes.
Lieutenant Colonel Davidson said: 'There are a number of possible scenarios: thrust or engine performance issues, excessive aircraft weight, poor trim or flap configuration, or a more critical failure that affected the aircraft's ability to climb.
'Weather, windshear or even bird strike can't be ruled out either at this early stage.'
However, Professor Paul Williams, an expert in atmospheric science at the University of Reading, said he believed weather wasn't a likely factor: 'At the time of the departure, the weather conditions at the airport appear to have been very good. It was a dry and sunny day in Ahmedabad, with temperatures near 40°C.
'There was good visibility and light winds from the west. There was no bad weather in the vicinity.
'There is no indication at this stage that turbulence or other weather conditions were a factor in the crash.'
Meanwhile, Professor John McDermid, an expert in safety engineering at the University of York, said: 'Take-off and landing are the most dangerous phases of flight - accidents from cruise are very unusual.
'However, that said, it's surprising that the accident occurred before the aircraft had even got to 200metres altitude. Pilots can abort take-off until quite late in the take-off roll, so it seems like the problem occurred very suddenly in the final part of the take-off roll, or shortly after take-off, and was sufficiently serious to be unmanageable.
'Given the levels of redundancy in systems, the fact that aircraft are designed to climb out on only one engine, etc. on initial sight this seems a very surprising accident.'
Captain Saurabh Bhatnagar, a former senior pilot, told local outlet NDTV that circulating footage showing the plane's terrifying descent 'looked like a case of multiple bird hits wherein both the engines have lost power'.
'The takeoff was perfect,' he said. 'And just, I believe, short of taking the gear up, the aircraft started descending, which can happen only in case the engine loses power or the aircraft stops developing lift.'
Aviation expert Sanjay Lazar noted that the Flight 171, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was only 11 years old, so was unlikely to have underlying technical issues. The plane was under the command of captain Summeet Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of experience.
A bird strike 'would explain why the aircraft did not have the power to lift,' he said. 'If there were multiple bird hits on take-off, it probably could not have gone beyond the 6-7 minute threshold and started falling.'
In pilots' forums, aviation experts said that it sounded like the plane's Ram Air Turbine (RAT), an emergency wind turbine, had been deployed shortly before the crash.
Police anticipate that there are no survivors on the Gatwick-bound Boeing.
'It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,' regional police chief G.S. Malik told reporters as rescue teams carried out desperate efforts to locate victims.
He added that with the plane crashing in a residential area with some offices, 'some locals would have also died.'
The total number of fatalities is not yet known but rescuers said at least 30 bodies have so far been recovered from a building.
'Our office is near the building where the plane crashed. We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames,' said one resident, who declined to be named.
Ahmedabad, the main city of India's Gujarat state, is home to around eight million people, and the busy airport is surrounded by densely packed residential areas.
'When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames,' resident Poonam Patni told AFP.
'Many of the bodies were burned,' she added.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the scenes from the crash were 'devastating', in a statement addressing passengers and their families 'at this deeply distressing time.'
Boeing said it was 'working to gather more information' on the incident which a source close to the case said was the first crash for a 787 Dreamliner.
Authorities are expected to begin recovery and investigation procedures soon.
Shocking images shared to social media showed chunks of the plane's fuselage and tail protruding from a demolished building.
Parts of the jet smashed into accommodation for doctors practising at the BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital.
Remnants of the fuselage and the landing gear were seen dangling through a gaping hole in the side of what appeared to be a canteen, with half-finished plates of food clearly visible on benches inside.
'The building on which it has crashed is a doctors' hostel... we have cleared almost 70% to 80% of the area and will clear the rest soon,' a senior police officer told reporters at the scene.
Firefighters doused the smouldering piles of debris with their hoses as photos and videos taken by horrified residents in Meghani showed a huge plume of thick black smoke emanating from the crash site.
'Our office is near the building where the plane crashed. We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames,' said one resident, who declined to be named.
Today's tragedy is the latest in a string of disasters involving Boeing jets and comes just six months after a 737 crashed in South Korea, killing 179.
In October 2018, Boeing's Lion Air flight 610 plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, in Indonesia killing all 189 people on board.
Then, in March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed minutes after departing Addis Ababa, resulting in the deaths of 157 passengers and crew.
Shares of planemaker Boeing fell 8% in premarket US trading following today's incident.
Boeing said in a statement it was aware of initial reports and was working to gather more information.