4 days ago
Indian bride heading to Britain to meet her husband for the first time since their wedding was among those on doomed Air India jet
An Indian bride heading to Britain to meet her husband for the first time since their wedding is among the 260 people feared to have died in the Air India disaster.
Khushboo Rajpurohit, 21, was on board the London Gatwick-bound aircraft when it crashed moments after take-off from Ahmedabad Airport in the northwestern Indian city of Gujarat this morning.
Terrifying CCTV footage shows doomed Air India flight 171 taking off and then plunging into the ground and exploding into a deadly fireball.
The plane carried 242 passengers, but at least 260 people, including some victims on the ground, are thought to have died.
Ms Rajpurohit had been on the way to visit her husband, London student Vipul Singh Rajpurohit, before the tragedy.
She hadn't seen him since their wedding and appeared to be in good spirits as she smiled at the camera in a picture taken outside the airport prior to her departure.
Videos show the Boeing 787 Dreamliner accelerating down the runway before pitching upwards and taking flight.
But just moments later, the plane appears to lose control and is shown rapidly descending with a high nose angle and landing gear deployed.
Terrifying CCTV footage shows the doomed plane taking off and then plunging into the ground and exploding into a deadly fireball
The aircraft then explodes in a huge fireball upon impact, as a massive plume of black smoke is seen billowing out from the site of the crash.
It reached no more than 625 feet in the air - just over 425 above the ground the airport stood on - according to tracking data, before its transponder signal was lost seconds later.
As it came down, the plane struck the populated Meghani area of the city and smashed into accommodation for doctors practising at the BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital.
Chilling images shared to social media revealed chunks of the plane's fuselage and tail protruding from the demolished building.
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.
Aviation experts say that the aircraft, which was carrying 242 passengers, including 53 Britons, may have suddenly lost power 'at the most critical phase of flight' after takeoff.
Although initially officials expected no one to survive the disaster, a British father miraculously managed to walk away.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, spoke from the safety of a hospital bed after escaping from the fallen flight this morning.
The passenger, who was in seat 11A when the plane came down in a residential area of Gujarat, recalled: 'Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.'
'When I got up, there were bodies all around me,' he told local media. 'I was scared. I stood up and ran.
'There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.'
Astonishing footage showed the passenger walking away from the scene with some visible injuries.
Authorities had said earlier they believed there were no survivors on the flight, while rescuers told reporters at the scene that they had recovered dozens of bodies of people inside buildings that the plane smashed into as it came down.
The possible causes of the tragedy could include a rapid change in wind causing an engine stall, or a bird strike on both engines.
Officials from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau are now at the scene to carry out an analysis of the wreckage and retrieve the stricken jet's black box.
Lt. Col. John R. Davidson, a former US Air Force pilot and commercial aviation safety consultant, said the plane appeared to have reached takeoff speed but not altitude, according to flight data, suggesting 'either a very late rotation or a stall shortly after takeoff'.
'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,' he said.
'Weather, windshear or even bird strike can't be ruled out either at this early stage.'
Captain Saurabh Bhatnagar, a former senior pilot, told 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 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.'
Davidson explained that the low altitude and high speed reading at the final moment might indicate a 'steep nose-down trajectory or a stall event' just after takeoff.
'This is consistent with accidents like Spanair Flight 5022 and Flydubai Flight 981, where mechanical or environmental factors combined with compromised lift performance led to loss of control during or just after liftoff,' he said.
The former pilot noted: 'Flight data alone isn't enough to determine fault — but it tells us this aircraft never truly made it airborne in a meaningful way.
