The death toll in the devastating Air India plane crash has climbed to 270, as officials reveal the chilling final words of the pilot moments before the plane plunged into a neighborhood just outside Ahmedabad Airport.
“Mayday, mayday,” Captain Sumeet Sabharwal radioed to air traffic control just seconds after takeoff on Thursday afternoon. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner lifted off at 1:39 p.m. local time—only to crash less than a minute later, slamming into a residential area near a medical college in Gujarat state.
“There was no response after that,” said Samir Kumar Sinha of India’s aviation ministry. “The aircraft reached 650 feet before it fell from the sky.”
Of the 242 passengers and crew on board, all but one perished. Another 29 people on the ground were also killed when the plane tore through Meghani Nagar, a neighborhood just over a mile from the runway.
The sole survivor, 40-year-old Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, is being treated at Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad. Dr. Dhaval Gameti said Ramesh is recovering well and may be discharged soon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ramesh in the hospital on Friday, offering words of support and promising a full investigation.
The crash site has become a scene of heartbreak and chaos. Grieving families have swarmed the hospital, many donating DNA samples to help identify victims. Most of the bodies recovered have been so badly burned or mutilated that visual identification is impossible.
“Where are my children? Did you recover them?” pleaded Rafiq Abdullah, who lost four family members on the flight. “The government is not answering these questions.”
Another man, waiting outside the morgue, grew desperate. “Give us the body,” he demanded. “We want to perform the last rites.”
Officials have pledged to speed up DNA testing, which typically takes up to 72 hours. They’ve also launched emergency inspections of all 34 Dreamliners in Air India’s fleet, with eight already examined and the rest scheduled immediately.
Investigators recovered the plane’s flight data recorder—commonly known as the black box—on Friday. It was found on a rooftop near the impact site and is expected to hold critical clues about what went wrong.
Jeff Guzzetti, an aviation safety consultant, said that if the black box is intact, investigators may have answers as soon as next week.
Meanwhile, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is working around the clock to extract data. A special multi-agency committee has also been formed by the government to determine the cause of the disaster.
The crash is the deadliest involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner since the aircraft began flying commercially in 2009. Despite widespread concerns about Boeing’s safety record in recent years, this is the first fatal Dreamliner crash in its 16-year history.