Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says one Canadian was on board an Air India plane that crashed in the Indian city of Ahmedabad on Thursday morning, with city authorities saying at least 240 people on board and on the ground were killed.
Carney said his thoughts are with the loved ones of the more than 240 passengers on board the plane that crashed, with many details still emerging from local authorities.
Devastated to learn of the crash of a London-bound Air India plane in Ahmedabad,” Carney wrote on X. “Canada’s transportation officials are in close contact with counterparts and I am receiving regular updates as the response to this tragedy unfolds.”
The Canadian citizen believed to be on the Air India flight is dentist Nirali Sureshkumar Patel, from Mississauga, Ont., her family confirmed to The Canadian Press. Global News has not independently verified the identity.
Global Affairs Canada says it could not confirm details on the Canadian on board due to privacy, but said it is ready to provide consular assistance.
Billowing smoke from the crash could be seen on local television channels in what appeared to be a populated area near the airport, with Police Commissioner G.S. Malik telling the Associated Press some locals may also have died as the aircraft fell in a residential area with offices.
“It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,” Malik said.
The cause of the crash is not yet known.
Vidhi Chaudhary, a top state police officer in the city, said one passenger survived, which was confirmed by Indian Home Minister Amit Shah.
Chaudhary said medical students, who were in a college hostel when the plane hit the building, were among at least 240 people who died in the crash that occurred shortly after takeoff.
Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Charred bodies lay on the ground and parts of the fuselage were scattered around the site. Indian army teams were assisting civil authorities to clear debris and help treat the injured.
A video on social media showed the jet slowly descending as if it were landing. As soon as it disappeared out of view behind rows of houses, a giant fireball filled the sky. The AP was able to verify the video by matching up the flight path of the plane from the runway with the crash site and the nearby residential area.
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At the crash site, the tail cone of the aircraft with damaged stabilizer fins still attached to it was lodged near the top of one of the buildings.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the crash “heartbreaking beyond words.”
“In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected,” he said in a social media post.
Sambit Patra, a lawmaker from Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said Gujarat’s former chief minister, Vijay Rupani, was among the dead.
Divyansh Singh, vice president of the Federation of All India Medical Association, said at least five students from the medical college were killed on the ground and 50 others were injured. Singh said some of them were in critical condition and many people are “feared buried in the debris.”
Air India said the flight bound for London Gatwick Airport was carrying 242 passengers and crew, with 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian aboard. The Boeing 787-8 crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. (08:08 GMT), Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told AP.
All efforts were being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site, India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X.
First crash of a Boeing 787
This is the first crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. Boeing said it was “working to gather more information.”
India’s aviation regulatory body said the aircraft gave a mayday call, signalling an emergency, but then did not respond to the calls made by the airport traffic control.
Aviation consultant John M. Cox, the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, told the AP from Los Angeles that while the first images of the crash were poor, it appeared the aircraft had its nose up and was not climbing, which is one of the things that investigators would look at.
“At this point, it’s very, very, very early; we don’t know a whole lot,” he said. “But the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring — the parameters on the flight data recorder are in the thousands — so once we get that recorder, they’ll be able to know pretty quickly what happened.”
The wide-body, twin-engine aircraft was introduced in 2009, and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the flightradar24 website.
Air India’s chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said that at the moment “our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families.”
“Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event,” he said.
U.K. promises support
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the crash “devastating” and British Cabinet minister Lucy Powell said the government will provide “all the support that it can” to those affected by the crash.
“This is an unfolding story, and it will undoubtedly be causing a huge amount of worry and concern to the many, many families and communities here and those waiting for the arrival of their loved ones,” she told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
“We send our deepest sympathy and thoughts to all those families, and the government will provide all the support that it can with those in India and those in this country as well,” she added.
Britain has very close ties with India. There were nearly 1.9 million people in the country of Indian descent, according to the 2021 U.K. census.
Condolences also poured in from King Charles III, who said he and his wife, Queen Camilla, were “desperately shocked” by the crash.
“Our special prayers and deepest possible sympathy are with the families and friends of all those affected by this appallingly tragic incident across so many nations,” he said in a statement.
Previous air disasters in India
The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020, when an Air India Express Boeing-737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people.
The worst air disaster in India was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhstan Airlines Flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes.
The crash comes days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers.
Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max 8, plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 passengers and crew members.
Shares of Boeing Co. tumbled nearly 9% before trading opened in the U.S.
— Associated Press journalist Rajesh Roy reported from New Delhi. Sheikh Saaliq in Srinagar, India, Pan Pylas, Kelvin Chan and Brian Melley in London and Annika Wolters, David Rising, Adam Schreck and Lorian Belanger in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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