A passenger plane operated by Air India, the country’s flagship carrier, crashed shortly after takeoff in the western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, according to India’s civil aviation minister.
Air India confirmed that its Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick Airport had been involved in “an incident” on Thursday.
The aircraft was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking website.
The plane had been scheduled to land in London at 6:25 p.m., London Gatwick Airport said on social media.
Air India said 242 passengers and crew were onboard the plane when it crashed.
These include 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian.
India’s minister of civil aviation, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, said that rescue teams had been mobilized to the crash site.
“Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad,” he wrote on social media. “We are on highest alert.”
Tata Group, the Indian conglomerate that owns Air India, confirmed in a social media post that Air India Flight 171 “was involved in a tragic accident today.”
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Air India, said that the company was focused on “supporting all the affected people and their families” and that it was doing all it could to assist the emergency response teams at the site.
Meanwhile, the Ahmedabad airport is now closed, and all of its flights have been suspended until further notice, according to an airport spokesperson.
Source – New York Times
(vitalnewsngr.com)
