American Marconi Wireless News - India plane crash: What we know so far

Here's what we know so far:

- What happened? -

The Gatwick Airport-bound plane left Ahmedabad, the main city of India's Gujarat state, with 242 people on board.

Air India's flight 171 issued a mayday call and crashed "immediately after takeoff", around 1:40 pm (0810 GMT), the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said.

Several videos posted on social media, which AFP was not able to immediately verify, showed an aircraft rapidly losing altitude -- with its nose up -- before it hit a building and exploded into a ball of fire.

Air India said the passengers included 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals and a Canadian. Two pilots and 10 cabin crew were also aboard.

- Scenes of horror -

The plane smashed into a building in a crowded residential area of Ahmedabad, a city home to about eight million people.

At the site of the crash, an AFP journalist saw people recovering bodies and firefighters trying to douse the smouldering wreckage.

A resident, who declined to be named, said: "We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames."

"When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames," another resident, Poonam Patni, told AFP, adding that many of the bodies were burned.

- 'No survivor' -

A city police commissioner told AFP there "appears to be no survivor" and that since the plane had crashed in a residential area, he expected "more casualties".

India's aviation ministry deployed all aviation and emergency response agencies "to take swift and coordinated action".

The airport was shut with all flights suspended until further notice.

The airline's chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said an emergency centre had been activated and a support team set up for families seeking information.

- Boeing investigating the incident -

US planemaker Boeing said it was "working to gather more information" on the incident and that it was ready to support Air India.

A source close to the case said this was the first time a 787 Dreamliner had crashed.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the pride of the US company's catalog for long-distance planes: a fuel-efficient, wide-body, lightweight aircraft able to transport up to 330 people.

Air India ordered 100 more Airbus planes last year after a giant contract in 2023 for 470 aircraft -- 250 Airbus and 220 Boeing.

O.Norris--AMWN