By Sudipto Ganguly and Abhijith Ganapavaram
AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) -Rescue workers searched for missing people and aircraft parts on Friday after an Air India plane crashed onto a medical college hostel in the city of Ahmedabad, killing more than 240 people in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with 242 people on board, headed for Gatwick Airport south of London, had only one survivor after it crashed onto the hostel during lunch hour.
There were deaths on the ground as well, with local media putting the toll as high as 24. Reuters could not immediately verify the number. Authorities said they were still searching for people missing on the ground.
Rescue personnel continued their search through the night and early morning, hunting for missing aircraft parts amid the debris that could explain why the plane crashed soon after taking off.
Local newspaper Hindustan Times reported that one of two black boxes from the plane had been found. Reuters could not verify the report and the paper did not say whether the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder had been recovered.
Residents living in the vicinity said that construction of the hostel for resident doctors was completed only a year ago and the buildings were not fully occupied.
“We were at home and heard a massive sound, it appeared like a big blast. We then saw very dark smoke which engulfed the entire area,” said 63-year-old Nitin Joshi, who has been living in the area for more than 50 years.
CCTV footage showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge fireball could be seen rising into the sky from beyond the houses.
Parts of the plane’s fuselage were scattered around the smouldering building into which it crashed. The tail of the plane was stuck on top of the building.
Air India said the lone survivor, a British national, was being treated in the hospital.
The man told Indian media how he had heard a loud noise shortly after Flight AI171 took off.
Vidhi Chaudhary, a top state police officer, said on Thursday the death toll was more than 240, revising down a previous toll of 294 as it included body parts that had been double counted.
The dead included Vijay Rupani, the former chief minister of Gujarat state, of which Ahmedabad is the main city.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hails from Gujarat, has visited the site and Air India Chief Executive Officer Campbell Wilson also arrived in the early hours of Friday.
The company has said the investigation would take time. Planemaker Boeing has said a team of experts is ready to go to India to help in the probe.
It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, a wide-body airliner that began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
The plane that crashed on Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in January 2014, Flightradar24 said.
The last fatal plane crash in India, the world’s third-largest aviation market and its fastest growing, was in 2020 and involved Air India Express, the airline’s low-cost arm.
The formerly state-owned Air India was taken over by Indian conglomerate Tata Group in 2022, and merged with Vistara – a joint venture between the group and Singapore Airlines – in 2024.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly, Abhijith Ganapavaram, Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad, writing by Tanvi Mehta, editing by Saad Sayeed)
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