Small plane crashes in Pennsylvania
A small plane crashed in Manheim Township, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
The incident occurred just after 3:15 p.m. and crews were on the scene, ABC6 reported.
The Aircraft N347M took off from the Lancaster airport at after 3 p.m. and quickly went down. It is not yet known what caused the incident.
Multiple injuries have been reported, the outlet noted.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), five people were on board the plane. The FAA said it will investigate the incident.
FlightAware said the plane was heading to Springfield, Ohio.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) said state police are on the ground assisting local first responders for the crash.
'All Commonwealth resources are available as the response continues, and more information will be provided as it becomes available,' Shapiro said on X.
It follows a string of aviation-related incidents since mid-January.
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Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
Anger and grief in Ahmedabad after India's deadliest crash in decades
Advertisement As of Thursday night, an estimated 269 people were confirmed dead, according to senior police official Vishaka Dabral. But students and faculty at the college believe the number of casualties on the ground may be higher, considering how busy the dining hall was at the time of the crash. Within a minute, the plane had ascended, leveled off, and then plummeted to the earth, erupting into a ball of fire, according to CCTV footage verified by The Washington Post. 'In a minute, everything has changed,' Vagadaya said from the hospital auditorium, where relatives waited Friday to give their blood to help identify loved ones who died in Thursday's crash, and had within a day morphed from a place of panic to a makeshift gathering site for mourners. The plane had been carrying 169 Indians, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals, and one Canadian, according to Air India. The 12 crew members were Indian. Advertisement The pilots of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner - captain Sumeet Sabharwal and first officer Clive Kundar - had issued a 'Mayday' distress call shortly after takeoff on Thursday, India's civil aviation regulatory authority said in a statement provided via WhatsApp. There was no further communication from the cockpit, it said. Air India did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Aviation experts caution that it is too early to determine the cause. India's civil aviation minister tweeted on Friday evening that investigators had retrieved the plane's flight data recorder, one of two 'black box' recorders that airlines typically have. 'This marks an important step forward in the investigation,' Ram Mohan Naidu said. Mohan Ranganathan, a former Boeing 737 instructor pilot, said the CCTV footage shows the aircraft's nose rising again during descent, a possible indication that the pilot stalled while attempting to regain lift. He said preliminary reports can be issued after two weeks of finding the flight data recorder, but a final report can take time. Other analysts pointed to abnormal takeoff configurations. Jeff Guzzetti, a former Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigator, said the videos show the landing gear remained down and the flaps unelevated. 'It happened during the daytime. The visibility was good. So what went wrong?' wondered Jitender Bhargava, a former Air India executive director and author of 'The Descent of Air India,' a book about the financial downfall of the airline. Rahul Bhatia, a medical student at the medical college, was frantic on Friday morning, switching between phone calls and responding to WhatsApp groups, trying to help his classmates find the missing. Advertisement He was still in shock from the stories coming in. He heard that a friend's wife, seven months pregnant, was in the dormitory when a plane ripped through the ceiling and wall. Her unborn child was seen outside her body, Bhatia said he heard - a report that The Post could not independently verify. 'I'll remember this for the rest of my life.' Major aviation disasters are rare in India, though Air India, the country's former national carrier, has been involved in several deadly incidents. In 2020, a flight operated by Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India, skidded off a runway during a heavy downpour in southern India and broke into pieces, killing 21 who had been on board. In 2010, 158 people died in Mangalore, western India, when an Air India Express plane overshot the runway while landing and crashed down the side of a hill. In 1978, all 213 people aboard Air India Flight 855 perished after the plane fell into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Mumbai shortly after takeoff. There has been 'no accountability,' Ranganathan said. Since its privatization in 2022, Air India - now owned by the Tata Group - has faced a string of regulatory setbacks. In March this year, Air India fired a simulator trainer pilot after a whistleblower alleged that the pilot had failed to properly discharge his duties and misrepresented the number of hours for which simulator training was carried out. Two months before the whistleblower incident, India's civil aviation regulator fined the airline 3,000,000 rupees (about $35,000) after it allowed a pilot to operate a flight without completing the mandatory takeoffs and landings. In March 2024, the airline was found in violation of flight duty time limitations - rules that help prevent pilot fatigue - and fined 8,000,000 rupees (about $93,000). Advertisement Bhargava said none of the violations would have led to safety hazards that 'translate into this tragedy.' 'But, no doubt,' he said, 'at the end of the day, the accountability is with the airline.' Thursday's crash was the first involving Boeing's 787, a fuel-efficient jet introduced by the company in 2009 and dubbed the Dreamliner. The jet that crashed was delivered to Air India in early 2014; it had taken off and landed more than 8,000 times, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm. Analysts said the inquiry is likely to focus on the actions of the pilots, the airline, maintenance of the jet, and Boeing - which has struggled for years to fully recover from two air disasters both involving a smaller jet, the 737 Max, in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes, which were linked to a design flaw, killed a combined 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia. But Bhargava said: 'I will not judge by previous controversies. I will judge by the safety track record of the Dreamliner.' Until Thursday, more than 1,100 Dreamliners in service globally had carried 1 billion passengers with no fatal crashes, according to Boeing. In a news conference on Thursday, US Transportion Secretary Sean P. Duffy said the NTSB and FAA were deploying investigators to assist India in its investigation of the deadly plane crash. Duffy added that it was still very early in the investigation, but promised to take action if there were safety failures. 'If there are initial factors of concern in regards to safety, we will be made aware and we will take action. When one of these planes go down, we take it very seriously,' he said. Advertisement Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday visited the crash site, touring the wreckage and speaking with Viswash Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the 242 people aboard the flight. News outlet ANI released an image of Modi looking up at the aircraft's mangled tail jutting out of the college's wall. The prime minister did not speak to reporters. Back at the Civil Hospital, still bedridden from his injuries, Ramesh spoke briefly to local media. He told the broadcaster Doordarshan that he was on the side of the plane that crashed into the ground floor of the hospital. 'When the door broke, I saw that there was some space for me to get out,' he said, his voice quivering. 'I really don't know how I survived.' Nearby, Hina Kundani trembled with rage inside the crowded hospital auditorium, waiting to provide a DNA sample. Three of her relatives had been aboard the flight. 'This is not the time for a photo session,' the 45-year-old shouted at Harsh Sanghavi, the home affairs minister of Gujarat, who was visiting the hospital at the time. Sanghavi left the auditorium shortly after a Post reporter approached him for comment, and his secretary did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'We're in trauma,' she told The Post, 'and ministers are taking photos.'
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Is There a Safest Seat in a Plane Crash? We Asked Experts.
Suddenly, airline passengers around the world are wondering if there is something special about Seat 11A. That's where Viswash Kumar Ramesh, 38, the sole survivor of the Air India Boeing 787-8 that crashed after takeoff in Ahmedabad, India, on Thursday was sitting. Did the location of his seat help spare his life? Probably not, aviation experts said. There's nothing that makes that or any other seat safer than anywhere else on a plane, and they added, it's usually not worth trying to game out safety when selecting where to sit for a flight. 'If you're in a crash, all bets are off,' said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. 'So pick whatever seat you want to make you feel comfortable.' While conventional wisdom holds that the rear of an aircraft may be safer, that theory falsely assumes that the front of a plane will always make impact first in the event of a crash, Mr. Guzzetti said. 'You just can't predict crash dynamics.' Airlines use different configurations for different aircraft. On that Air India flight, Seat 11A was in an exit row on the left side, according to a seat map on SeatGuru. Sitting near an exit may allow passengers to escape more quickly in some circumstances, but Mr. Ramesh told India's state broadcaster that the right side of the aircraft was 'crushed against a wall,' preventing anyone else who may have survived the initial impact from escaping through the exit on that side. In an emergency like a fire, when 'you're still sitting on your landing gear and the airplane is pretty much upright and intact,' an exit row may offer the quickest path to safety, Mr. Guzzetti said. 'But with regard to the crash dynamics of an accident like Air India, I think it's just a matter of chance.' Shawn Pruchnicki, a former accident investigator at the Air Line Pilots Association and an assistant professor of aviation safety at Ohio State University, chalked up Mr. Ramesh's survival to 'purely luck.' 'In these types of accidents people just don't survive this close to the front, this close to fuel,' Dr. Pruchnicki said, referring to the fact that the fuel tanks on a Boeing 787 are mainly on the wings and in the fuselage between them. The crash on Thursday was the latest in a string of recent aviation disasters around the globe, including a midair collision in Washington in January, and crashes in South Korea and Kazakhstan in December, that have raised fears among some travelers about the safety of flying. Aviation experts say flying remains safe and that crashes, though high-profile, remain very rare. Christine Chung contributed reporting. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
New York Post
2 days ago
- New York Post
Lone survivor of Air India crash sat in seat 11A — but experts say that's not usually the safest place on a plane
The sole survivor of the deadly Air India crash that killed 241 passengers onboard was strapped into seat 11A — though aviation experts say it's not typically considered one of the safest spots on an airplane. British passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was in an emergency exit window seat just behind business class when the Boeing 787 Dreamliner went down seconds after takeoff and burst into flames in a residential neighborhood in India Thursday afternoon. Ramesh was then found limping through the streets of Ahmedabad, surrounded by the dead bodies of his fellow travelers and the wreckage of the doomed London-bound passenger plane. 4 British passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was in 11A — an emergency exit window seat when the Boeing 787 crashed Ahmedabad, India. SeatGuru But his miraculous outcome defies studies and expert claims that the dreaded middle seat toward the rear of an aircraft is not just the safest place, but also offers the best odds if the plane goes down. Federal Aviation Administration data analyzed by Time Magazine in 2015 showed that the back third of a plane has the lowest fatality rate — but survival varies with the nature of the crash and where the aircraft absorbs the brunt of the impact. 4 Air India boarding pass for Ramesh Vishwash Kumar, flight AI171, seat 11A. 'It all depends on the crash dynamics,' Daniel Kwasi Adjekum, a University of North Dakota aviation safety researcher, told Live Science. 'Then it really matters where you are seated to be able to survive structurally.' Passengers in aisle seats in the middle section of the cabin fared the worst, with a 44% fatality rate, per the Time's study, which reviewed 35 years of FAA data. 4 Debris of the Air India plane embedded in a building after a crash. SIDDHARAJ SOLANKI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock However, a 2008 study from the University of Greenwich found that being within five rows of an emergency exit boosted survival chances with passengers able to evacuate the plane at a quicker rate. 'There's no one-size-fits-all-answer,' Cheng-Lung Wu, a professor at the University of New South Wales, said, noting that seats close to the plane's wings have more structural protection, Live Science reported. 4 Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was the sole survivor of the deadly crash. Despite Thursday's fatal devastation, air travel remains one of the safest forms of transportation. The odds of dying on a commercial flight in the US are about 1 in 13.7 million, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Air Transport Management. The National Transportation Safety Board also recorded that 94% of major passenger jet accidents between 2001 and 2017 had a full survival rate. The cause of Thursday's deadly crash, which also injured 41 people on the ground, is under investigation.
