These are the first pictures and names of the pilots and cabin crew of the ill-fated Air India plane that crashed just moments after take-off.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of experience, was today named as the pilot of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
First Officer Clive Kunder, from Mumbai, was co-piloting. He had logged 1,100 of flying hours and completed his training at the Florida-based Paris Air Flight School, according to local media.
Cabin crew members Nganthoi Sharma Kongbrailatpam and Lamnunthem Singson were also revealed to have been onboard.
Senior members Shradha Dhavan and Aparna Mahadik, along with Saineeta Chakravarti, Deepak Pathak, Maithili Patil, Irfan Shaikh, Roshni Songhare Rajendra, and Manisha Thapa were also named among the crew.
Today, Kongbrailatpam’s family members broke down in tears as they flipped through an album to find pictures of her.
Indian news company NDTV reported one grief-stricken female relative as saying in video footage: ‘My child, my child, I raised with these hands, where have you gone? I want to see you. Where are you?’
British father Vishwash Kumar Ramesh is thought to be the lone survivor of the plane disaster, which is believed to have claimed the lives of hundreds of people in India.
The 40-year-old spoke from the safety of a hospital bed after escaping from the fallen Flight 171 this morning.
The passenger, who was in seat 11A when the plane came down in a residential area, 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 to his face.
‘Yes, one survivor is confirmed,’ said Dhananjay Dwivedi, principal secretary of Gujarat state’s health department.
Authorities had said earlier they believed there were no survivors on the Gatwick-bound flight that crashed in Gujarat carrying 242 passengers, including 53 Britons.
The regional police chief said ‘some locals would have also died’, given that the plane smashed down into offices and accommodation for doctors close to a hospital.
So far, rescue teams supported by the military have recovered 204 bodies, with casualties from the plane and the area surrounding the crash.
The passengers included 159 Indian nationals, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian. Eleven of those on board were children, including two newborns.
Aviation experts say that Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, may have suddenly lost power ‘at the most critical phase of flight’ after takeoff.
The possible causes are believed to include a rapid change in wind or a bird strike leading to a double engine stall.
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.
Videos shared on social media showed the aircraft rapidly losing altitude – with its nose up – before it hit a building and erupted in a violent explosion.
The Boeing jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad Airport in Gujarat at around 1:40pm (0810 GMT), officials said.
Ahmedabad, the main city of India’s Gujarat state, is home to around eight million people, and the busy airport is surrounded by densely packed residential areas.
‘When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames,’ resident Poonam Patni told AFP.
‘Our office is near the building where the plane crashed. We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames,’ said one resident, who declined to be named.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the scenes from the crash were ‘devastating’, in a statement addressing passengers and their families ‘at this deeply distressing time.’
Boeing said it was ‘working to gather more information’ on the incident which a source close to the case said was the first crash for a 787 Dreamliner.
