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The tragic end of the ill-fated Air India flight that crashed into a doctors’ hostel has come to light, with a minimum of 204 bodies found amidst the wreckage.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner with 242 passengers on board – including 53 Brits – smashed into a doctors’ hostel in Ahmedabad in the west of India.
The plane was headed to London Gatwick when it crashed just moments after take-off.
A city police commissioner said there are unlikely to be any survivors – with many passengers still trapped under the rubble.
But a Brit man, Ajay Kumar Vishwash, 40, cheated death after jumping off the flaming jet – walking away with minor injuries.
It comes as…
Here is a second-by-second breakdown of the doomed plane’s journey.
9:00:50 – Aircraft ready for take-off
The Air India aircraft was set to depart at 9:09 BST from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, bound for London Gatwick, carrying 242 people including passengers and crew.
Passengers on the Air India flight include 217 adults, 11 children and two infants, according to a source.
Of them, 53 are Brits, 169 Indian nationals, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian.
09:04:12 – Plane picks up speed on the runway
Approximately four minutes after being stationary on the tarmac, the plane started to accelerate, gaining around 11MPH as it moved along the runway.
The flight is scheduled to make a nine-hour 50 minute non-stop journey to the London airport.
9:08:50 – Plane departs
The Air India flight takes off, headed to London Gatwick.
It has a sudden climb to 625ft and moving at around 200mph.
To make that climb at such speed is “highly irregular,” according to Lt. Col. John R. Davidson, former U.S. Air Force pilot and editor of Felons Assistance and commercial aviation safety consultant.
He said: “From the data available, AIC171 appears to have reached takeoff speed — but not altitude.
“To be at 625 feet at over 170 knots [196MPH] more than four minutes after rolling out is highly irregular.
“This suggests either a very late rotation or a stall shortly after takeoff.”
Milliseconds later – Pilots give mayday call
It is at the brief climb to around 625ft that Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the highly experienced pilot, and Clive Kundar, his co-pilot, issue a mayday call.
The pilots had almost 10,000 hours of flying experience between them.
Helicopter pilot Seun Komolafe revealed what the pilots could have noticed in the cockpit that prompted the mayday call.
She told Sky News: “[The mayday call] tells me that they were able to gather data in that short moment and realise that something wasn’t going quite right and they were able to communicate it to themselves, first of all, and also to air traffic control to let them know that there was an issue.”
And Prof. Graham Braithwaite, the director of aerospace and aviation at Cranfield University, said: “Take-off is a critical stage because the aircraft is still accelerating and any problem-solving requires a rapid response.
“Although take-off is a critical stage of flight, aircraft accidents are incredibly rare, especially involving modern aircraft types such as the Boeing 787.”
08:08:51 – Last signal received
The plane’s transponder signal drops seconds after leaving the runway, according to Flightradar24.
Controllers make subsequent calls to the mayday but receive no response, civil authorities said.
Prof Paul Williams, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, said: “At the time of the departure, the weather conditions at the airport appear to have been very good.
“It was a dry and sunny day in Ahmedabad, with temperatures near 40°C.
“There was good visibility and light winds from the west. There was no bad weather in the vicinity.
“There is no indication at this stage that turbulence or other weather conditions were a factor in the crash.”
Less than 60 seconds later – Plane hits BJ Medical College campus
Less than a minute after the initial take-off, the Air India plane plunges to the ground just a few hundred yards from the end of the runway.
Medical students at BJ Medical College campus are having a lunch break in the dining room when the plane smashes onto a part of the building.
It explodes into a gargantuan fireball, with plumes of thick back smoke billowing from the crash site.
Lt. Col. Davidson said that the low altitude and high speed reading could indicate a “steep nose-down trajectory or a stall event” just after the plane took off.
He added: “This is consistent with accidents like Spanair Flight 5022 and Flydubai Flight 981, where mechanical or environmental factors combined with compromised lift performance led to loss of control during or just after liftoff.”
Cause of the crash remains unclear
Theories of what may have caused the deadly crash have been circulating, but none confirmed.
Davidson said: “There are a number of possible scenarios: thrust or engine performance issues, excessive aircraft weight, poor trim or flap configuration, or a more critical failure that affected the aircraft’s ability to climb.
“Weather, windshear or even bird strike can’t be ruled out either at this early stage.”
He added: “Flight data alone isn’t enough to determine fault — but it tells us this aircraft never truly made it airborne in a meaningful way.
“Whatever happened, it happened fast, and right at the most critical phase of flight.”
Captain Saurabh Bhatnagar, a former senior pilot, said that footage of the doomed plane’s descent “looked like a case of multiple bird hits wherein both the engines have lost power“.
He told NDTV: “The takeoff was perfect.
“And just, I believe, short of taking the gear up, the aircraft started descending, which can happen only in case the engine loses power or the aircraft stops developing lift.”
The potential cause of the horror crash has divided experts, with aviation specialist Sanjay Lazar explaining how the Boeing Dreamliner was just 11 years old, suggesting that the plane having underlying technical issues is unlikely.
He said that a bird strike “would explain why the aircraft did not have the power to lift,” adding: “If there were multiple bird hits on take-off, it probably could not have gone beyond the 6-7 minute threshold and started falling.”
Meanwhile other aviation experts have said that it sounded as if the aircraft’s Ram Air Turbine – an emergency wind turbine – had been deployed just moments before the tragedy.
There is to likely be a joint investigation to uncover the cause of the crash, according to aviation lawyer and Partner at UK law firm Stewarts, Peter Neenan.
He said: “In due course, the Indian Directorate of General Civil Aviation will begin their investigation.
“The US National Transportation Safety Board will assist in that investigation and given the number of deaths of British nationals, we would expect the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch to also assist.”
These kinds of investigations “routinely take two or more years to complete,” he added.
