Air India plane crash: Investigation underway, black boxes found
The Boeing Dreamliner crashed shortly after takeoff on Thursday.
An investigation is underway as to what caused an Air India airliner carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members to crash shortly after takeoff on Thursday. Both black boxes of the aircraft have been found on Friday, an Indian official confirmed to ABC News.
The boxes -- with one being damaged but recoverable -- will be investigated in India and U.S. investigators are expected to arrive on Sunday, Shri G.V.G. Yugandhar, director general of India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, said.
The plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, was en route to the United Kingdom and crashed into a building in India's Meghaninager area near Ahmedabad airport, leaving 246 dead and at least one surviving passenger, local officials and the airline said. Boeing's Dreamliner planes had not previously been involved in an incident where passenger fatalities were reported.
"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 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 on Thursday that Vishwaskumar Ramesh, one of the passengers on the downed Air India flight, is alive and hospitalized there.
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"Everything happened in front of my eyes. I thought I would die," Ramesh told NDTV in an exclusive interview on Friday. "The side where I was seated fell into the ground floor of the building. There was some space. When the door broke, I saw that space and I just jumped out."
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 Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation said the plane "fell on the ground outside the airport perimeter" immediately after it departed from the airport. Video from the site appeared to show the jet disappear below the tree line, which was followed seconds later by a ball of fire and a thick plume of gray smoke.
"The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement on social media on Thursday. "It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it."
Air India announced it will organize two relief flights, one each from Delhi and Mumbia, to Ahmedabad for the next of kin passengers and Air India staff.
Tata Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate of companies that owns Air India, said they will provide families of each person who has lost their life in the crash with 1 crore (about $116,000) and will also cover the medical expenses of those injured.
ABC News' Joe Simonetti, Dada Jovanovic, Clara McMichael, Ellie Kaufman, Sam Sweeney and Camilla Alcini contributed to this report.
