Doomed Air India Flight 171 was airborne for just one mile before the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, carrying 242 passengers and crew, came crashing back to earth in one of India’s worst ever aviation disasters.
The death toll now stands at 279 as rescuers continue picking through rubble.
But the miraculous escape of passenger 11A – British national Viswash Kumar Ramesh – with nothing but minor injuries has also captivated audiences and stumped experts.
The Boeing jet took off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel airport in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat at 1:38pm local time (08:08 BST).
The flight reached an altitude of just 625 feet, or 190 metres, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24.
There it glided, seemingly suspended midair, but seconds later began descending rapidly as the engines appeared to give out.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunder had already placed a mayday call, but they had little over a minute between lifting off from the tarmac and suffering their fatal crash.
The underside of their jet smashed into a building housing trainee doctors working at the nearby BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital, killing dozens more civilians.
Now, as India’s aviation authorities conduct their investigations and medical staff perform the grim task of identifying the remains of the dead for burial, this is how the final journey of Air India flight 171 played out.
The crash
A selection of footage emerged in the hours following the crash that showed Flight 171’s entire flight from takeoff to crash.
The takeoff appeared perfectly normal, but within seconds of leaving the runway the passenger jet appeared frozen in mid-air, unable to gain altitude.
Aviation experts believe the Boeing 787 Dreamliner may 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.
Commercial airline pilot Steve Schreiber, who analyses plane crashes and close calls, said a new HD-quality video is a ‘gamechanger’ in diagnosing the cause and suggested the footage supported the dual engine failure theory.
He pointed out that in the footage, a small device is seen extended underneath the plane’s fuselage, known as the Ram Access Turbine (RAT), whose function is to support the aircraft’s electrical power and hydraulic pressure in an emergency.
Schreiber said that on a 787 there are three things that will deploy the RAT automatically: a massive electrical failure; a massive hydraulic failure; or a dual engine failure.
The plane’s flight path would have taken it directly above the B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital along with a residential street.
The plane came down 1.6 kilometres – almost exactly one mile, from the end of the runway, and just a few hundred metres shy of the medical facility.
Ahmedabad residents who witnessed the crash explained how the aircraft banked slightly to avoid apartment buildings in the final seconds before impact.
Ahmedabad residents who witnessed the crash explained how the aircraft banked slightly to avoid apartment buildings in the final seconds before impact
The jet was heavily fuelled for the long haul flight to London, which ignited and quickly whipped up a brutal inferno seconds after impact
A view of the site where the plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat on June 12, 2025
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, left, and First Officer Clive Kunder, right, avoided several apartment blocks
Unfortunately, the underside of the jet, including the landing gear and part of its tail, clipped a dormitory for staff working at the hospital.
The machinery smashed through the upper levels of the building and triggered a fire in which more than 30 people, mostly medical students, perished.
With the landing gear and plane’s tail left embedded in the stricken structure, the rest of the jet skidded into a grassy area a stone’s throw away from residential properties – narrowly averting an even greater catastrophe.
The jet was heavily fuelled for the long-haul flight to London, which ignited and quickly whipped up a brutal inferno seconds after impact.
Residents of the nearby apartments hailed the pilot, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, as a hero for avoiding their homes and saving yet more lives in the process.
‘Thanks to the pilot Captain Sabharwal, we survived. He’s a hero. It is because of him we are alive,’ resident Jahanvi Rajput, 28, told The Sun.
‘The green space next to us was visible to him and that’s where he went.’
Mum-of-two Chancal Bai, 50, added: ‘If the plane had crashed into this residential area, there would have been hundreds more victims.’
Officials have found the second black box from the doomed Air India flight 171 which will reveal a second-by-second reconstruction of the events that led to the fatal fireball crash
Parts of the jet crashed into the BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital
Remnants of the fuselage and the landing gear were seen dangling through a gaping hole in the side of the canteen, with half-finished plates of food clearly visible on benches inside
Rescue team members work as smoke rises at the site in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
The miraculous escape
The sole survivor of the disaster told reporters how he ‘just walked out’ of the damaged jet as it lay at the crash site moments before it was engulfed in flames.
Viswash Ramesh, 40, said that he was in India with his brother for the best part of a year to visit relatives and was returning home to Leicester.
He was seated in 11A on the doomed flight from Ahmedabad.
While sitting up on a hospital bed, he told DD India this weekend that he ‘can’t explain’ everything that he witnessed as the plane plummeted to the ground.
But he recalled that lights on board the plane began ‘flickering green and white’ when the engines seemed to lose thrust.
As the plane ground to a halt, it rotated on its axis, leaving Ramesh’s side of the jet closer to the ground and allowing him to practically step off the plane without suffering further injury.
‘The emergency door was broken, my seat is broken,’ he said.
Asked if he escaped the plane by jumping to the ground, he replied: ‘I am not jumping. I just walked out.’
‘It’s a miracle,’ he said when discussing his survival and injuries, explaining how a rupture in the plane’s fuselage left enough space for him to squeeze through.
‘I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out,’ he said, adding that he saw ‘people dying in front of my eyes’.
He cut into an adjacent street as the jet fuel ignited and narrowly escaped the inferno.
Stunning footage seems to uphold his account – Ramesh is seen emerging from the wreckage and stumbling toward gobsmacked onlookers while clasping his phone as he called his father.
A thick cloud of black smoke is seen emanating from the disaster site just over his shoulder.
Speaking to Indian press, Ramesh’s dumbstruck doctor said: ‘He has minor injuries only. He has some abrasions over his left forearm and swelling over left eyelid and over the eyes.
‘Chest and abdomen is clear, no lung fractures present. The patient is vitally stable.’
Shocking footage taken just outside the medical college the plane crashed into showed the sole survivor calmly walking away as an inferno raged just a few metres behind him
Astonishing footage showed Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, walking away from the scene with some visible injuries to his face
Vishwash Ramesh, 40, was visited by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in hospital
While sitting up in his seat, he told DD India, that he was ‘feeling better than yesterday’ and that the ‘treatment is going good’
The aftermath
Emergency and rescue services say they have recovered more than 270 bodies from the site, including around 30 people killed when the plane hit the medical dormitory. 279 people are believed to have died in the tragedy.
Indian authorities have so far handed over the remains of 47 victims, and the bodies of 92 others have been identified through DNA matching and will be transferred to relatives soon.
The first funerals for some of the victims have been held in Ahmedabad, but relatives of the dead have complained about delays and a lack of communication from authorities.
‘They said it would take 48 hours. But it’s been four days and we haven’t received any response,’ said Rinal Christian, 23, whose elder brother was a passenger on the jetliner.
‘My brother was the sole breadwinner of the family,’ Christian said on Sunday. ‘So what happens next?’
Among the latest victims identified was Vijay Rupani, a senior member of India’s ruling party and former chief minister of Gujarat state.
His flag-draped coffin was carried in Ahmedabad by soldiers, along with a portrait of the politician draped in a garland of flowers.
Meanwhile, investigators from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) are now analysing the wreckage of the jet along with the contents of the black boxes recovered from the crash site.
These small but tough electronic flight data recorders are made with robust materials such as titanium or steel and insulated with fire-resistant materials to withstand extreme conditions during a crash.
A family member cries upon hearing the news of her brother who died when the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
The aircraft crashed into the densely populated Meghani Nagar area near Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, resulting in a massive explosion and fire due to the heavy fuel load for the international journey
Relatives bury the coffins containing the remains of Rozar David Christian and his wife, Rachnaben Rozar Christian, both victims of the Air India plane crash, at a cemetery in Ahmedabad, India, Sunday, June 15, 2025
People gather for a funeral procession of former Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani, who died when an Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane crashed during take-off, in Rajkot, Gujarat, India, June 16, 2025
Meena Patel’s daughter touches the portrait of her mother, who died in the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane crash during take-off from an airport,in Ahmedabad, India June 16,2025
Wreckage of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner lies at the site, showing part of its registration ‘VT-ANB’, where the Air India plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
One records flight data, such as altitude and speed and the other contains the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), capturing all audio from the cockpit, including pilot conversations, radio transmissions, warning alarms and ambient mechanical sounds.
The devices should allow investigators to piece together a second-by-second reconstruction of the events that led to the fatal fireball.
Alongside the formal investigation into Flight 171’s demise by the AAIB, the Indian government has set up a high-level committee to examine the causes leading to the crash.
The committee will focus on formulating procedures to prevent and handle aircraft emergencies in the future, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement Saturday.
Authorities have also begun inspecting Air India’s entire fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners, Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said Saturday in New Delhi at his first news briefing since the crash on Thursday.
Eight of the 34 Dreamliners in India have already undergone inspection, Kinjarapu said, adding that the remaining aircraft will be examined with ‘immediate urgency.’
It comes as another Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane bound for New Delhi turned back to its departure airport in Hong Kong early Monday morning after the pilot suspected a technical issue mid-air, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Flight AI315 took off from Hong Kong at 12:16pm local time and landed just over an hour later, according to tracking data on Flightradar24.
Boeing and Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Hong Kong-New Delhi flight.
