An Air India passenger plane bound for London Gatwick has crashed shortly after taking off in Ahmedabad in western India.
More than 240 people were on board the flight, which took off at 1.39pm local time , Air India said, and was scheduled to land in Gatwick at 6.25pm BST.
Among the passengers on board on Thursday were 53 British nationals, 169 Indian nationals, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals.
It is yet unclear what may have caused the crash, but aviation experts have shared their knowledge based on the emerging footage of the incident.
The 787 Dreamliner involved in the crash is a widebody, twin-engine plane and had a total of 256 seats on board.
It is the first ever crash of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
Read also: More thank 100 bodies taken from site of crashed Indian Air plane
The aircraft was introduced in 2009 and there are over 1,100 models currently in service across 80 operators.
Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told the BBC that investigators would likely need to examine “a possible error in the cockpit.”
Mr Thomas observed that the aircraft’s undercarriage appeared to still be deployed, while the flaps had already been retracted—something he described as “unusual” so soon after takeoff.
“The plane simply sank, it didn’t lurch from one side to the other, showing a possible mechanical problem. It looked as though, for all in tens and purposes, look as as though it was coming into land,” Mr Thomas said.
“We are not looking at this vision of this 787 that has taken off and now sinking down into crash, the undercarriage is still down but the flaps have been retracted.
“Now I am just wondering whether in fact there was some possible error in the cockpit.”
Mr Thomas referenced the Staines Air Disaster of 1972, whereby British European Airways Flight 548, a Hawker Siddeley Trident aircraft, crashed near Staines, killing all 188 lives on board.
While the precise cause of this crash was never determined, investigations pointed to a premature retraction of the aircraft’s lift devices.
Mr Thomas said there are over 1,100 787 models in service around the world and that up until now, it has had a “perfect safety record”.
“There’s three models — the 787-8 and there’s about 400 of those, there’s the 787-9 and there’s about 700 of those and there’s a few hundred of the 787-10s. It’s the same basic aeroplane, just different lengths.
“There’s about 80 operators of the aeroplane around the world,” Mr Thomas said, including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
“They operate essentially flawlessly, they did have some battery issues very early on […] but that was a very early on problem and that was rectified back in 2011.
“Since then they’ve been giving perfect service.”
Meanwhile, a former pilot told Indian news TV channel New Delhi Television LTD the incident appears to involve “multiple bird hits”.
Saurabh Bhatnagar said: “It looks, prima facie, like a case of multiple bird hits wherein both the engines have lost power.
“The take-off 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.
“Obviously, the investigation will reveal the exact reason.”
He added that footage show the plane “came down in a controlled fashion”.
Bird strikes are defined as a collision between a bird and an aircraft which is in flight, taking-off or landing. A large flock of birds entering an aircraft engine can cause power loss.
Efforts to reduce the number of bird strikes include using lights on planes to make them more visible to birds, and making loud noises at airports to scare them away.
Sky News’ science correspondent Thomas Moore said investigators will now be studying the video and the two black boxes from the plane if they are recovered recording cockpit conversations and technical data to try to understand why the crash occurred.
“It’s possible there was an engine failure of some kind, perhaps caused by a catastrophic mechanical fault. But the plane is designed to be able to fly with one engine, even at take-off, so something else would have to go wrong too,” he said.
“Both engines could have failed if they sucked in a flock of birds as the plane took off. It’s happened in other air crashes.”
