Air India Plane Crash: Aircraft Started Sinking After Reaching 650 Feet, Pilot's Last Message Was 'Mayday', Says Aviation Ministry

The pilots of London-bound Air India flight AI-171, which crashed within a seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad aiport - sent a final distress call Air Traffic Control at 1.39 pm, the Aviation Ministry said on Saturday (14 June).

Officials said the crew made the distress call to ATC after the aircraft couldn’t climb past 650 feet.

All subsequent ATC attempts to re-establish contact went unanswered and the plane crashed.

“Mayday, Mayday...”, was the final message sent by the plane's captain moments before the heavily-fuelled Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a college students' hostel in a residential area near the airport, bursting into flames. Only one of 242 on board survived.

In total, 274 deaths have been confirmed, including those on the ground, in India's worst aviation disaster in nearly 15 years, NDTV reported.

In a press conference on Saturday, Civil Aviation Secretary S K Sinha said the ministry was notified of the crash around 2 pm—approximately 20 minutes after the aircraft crashed.

"On 12 June around 2 PM, we received the information that the plane going from Ahmedabad to Gatwick London had crashed. We immediately got detailed information about this through ATC Ahmedabad. This was an AIC 171 and there were a total of 242 people on board, including 230 passengers, 2 pilots and 10 crew members," Sinha said, news agency ANI reported.

"This plane took off at 1.39 pm and within a few seconds, after reaching a height of about 650 feet, it started sinking, i.e., it started losing height. At 1:39 pm, the pilot informed Ahmedabad ATC that it was a May Day, i.e., full emergency. According to ATC, when it tried to contact the plane, it did not receive any response. Exactly after 1 minute, this plane crashed in Medhaninagar, which is located at a distance of about 2 km from the airport," the civil aviation secretary added.

"The captain of the plane was Sumit Sabharwal and the first officer was Clive Sundar. As far as the entire history of the plane is concerned, before this accident, the plane had completed Paris-Delhi-Ahmedabad sector without any accident," he said.

"Due to the accident, the runway was closed at 2.30 pm and after completing all the protocols, the runway of Ahmedabad was opened for limited flights from 5 PM," Sinha said.

The aircraft's black box has been found and more than 100 workers and 40 engineers are engaged in efforts to remove wreckage of the plane from where it crashed, NDTV reported.

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