jet crash kills 246 people, with at least 1 passenger surviving: Officials

LONDON and DELHI — airliner carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members en route to the United Kingdom crashed into a building shortly after takeoff on Thursday, leaving 246 dead and at least one surviving passenger, local officials and the airline said.

“The flight, which departed from Ahmedabad at 13:38 hrs, was carrying 242 passengers and crew members on board the Boeing 787-8 aircraft,” the airline said in a statement posted on social media. “Of these, 169 are Indian nationals, 53 are British nationals, 1 Canadian national and 7 Portuguese nationals.”

The victims include 241 passengers and crew members as well as five medical students who were inside the medical college and hospital the aircraft crashed into, according to hospital officials. Many others inside the building were injured — some seriously — and are receiving treatment, hospital officials said.

The Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad confirmed to ABC News that Vishwaskumar Ramesh, one of the passengers on the downed Air India flight, is alive and hospitalized there.

Vishwaskumar’s brother, Nayankumar Ramesh, said it is a “miracle” his brother survived, but is “worried” about his other brother who was also on board.

“He said, ‘Our plane’s crashed, I don’t know where my brother is. I don’t see any other passengers. I don’t know how I’m alive, how I exited the plane,” Nayankumar Ramesh told ABC News about his brother’s escape from the plane. “Just hearing about the crash, I’m scared to fly now, to even stay on a plane now.”

Officials earlier said no survivors had been expected in the crash. The process of retrieving the bodies of victims is almost complete and DNA profiling of the family members of victims will be done very soon, according to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah.

There were around 125,000 liters of fuel inside the aircraft, with temperatures so high that there was no opportunity to rescue the passengers, Shah said.

The plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed in the Meghaninagar area near Ahmedabad airport, in India’s Gujarat state, the city’s Police Commissioner G.S. Malik said Thursday. Boeing’s Dreamliner planes had not previously been involved in an incident where passenger fatalities were reported. This plane had more than 41,000 hours of flying time, which is considered average for this aircraft, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.