An Air India plane bond for Gatwick Airport in London crashed on Thursday in the country’s Ahmedabad city just five minutes after taking off.
According to reports, the aircraft with over 240 passengers on board, which was due to takeoff from the Ahmedabad International Airport at 9:50 local time and land at London Gatwick Airport at 18:25 local time, crashed into q residential area of Meghani Nagar shortly after taking off.
Air India confirmed the incident in a statement posted on its X social media account.
“Flight AI171, operating Ahmedabad-London Gatwick, was involved in an incident today, 12 June 2025,” the airline stated. “At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will share further updates at the earliest,” the statement reads.”
Briefly.ng, in videos shared online, saw firefighters swinging into action to douse smoke from the debris of the plane on fire.
The airline noted that 169 of the passengers on board were indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian citizen.
The crashed aircraft is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – a twin-engine, wide-body plane – and June 12, 2025, is the first time of crashing, according to the Aviation Safety Network database, as reported by Al Jazeera.
The last time an Air India passenger aircraft crashed was in 2020.
It happened when the “Air India Express Boeing 737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people”..
The worst air crash in India’s history was on November 12, 1996, following the mid-air collision of a Saudi Arabia Airline plane and a Kazakhstan Airlines flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, which resulted in the death of all 349 passengers on board the two planes.
