After the devastating aircraft accident in his West Indian home state of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inspected the crash site on Friday morning. The head of government ran past black charred debris and houses. Then he attended a local hospital to speak to some injuries. The exact number of fatalities is still unclear. At least 265 deaths were mentioned in the Indian press. The airline Air India announced that of the 242 people on board 241 had died. The other victims had to be complained about in the houses at the crash site.
A total of five to six buildings in the residential area of the West Indian city of Ahmedabad are destroyed in whole or in part. The Boeing 787, which was on the way to Gatwick Airport London, has broken into several large parts. A wing lay on a street, the rear protruded from the ruins of a building. The only survivor, a Briton of Indian origin, had sat in 11a near one of the emergency outputs of the Dreamliner. How he survived the devastating crash is unclear. Relatives spoke of the press of a “miracle”.
“When I woke up, there were corpses around me everywhere”
The newspaper “The Hindustan Times” interviewed the survivor with the name Viswash Kumar Ramesh in the hospital on Thursday. “30 seconds after the start there was a loud bang, then the plane crashed. Everything went so quickly,” said Ramesh. In the crash, he apparently lost consciousness. “When I woke up, there were corpses around me everywhere,” said the survivor. Then he got up and made a way through the debris parts. “Someone grabbed me, put me in an ambulance and took me to the hospital.” A video from the crash location shows how it is apparently under shock on the way to an ambulance.
According to the report, the Brit has suffered bruises on the chest, eyes and feet. He was in India with a brother for a few days to visit family there. The brother had sat in another part of the aircraft and has not yet been identified. According to Interior Minister Amit Shah, the exact number of victims can only be mentioned after a DNA comparison. After a visit to the location on Thursday, he had reported that more than 1,000 DNA tests had already been done. According to him, the plane had 125,000 liters of fuel on board. The high amount of fuel led to a strong explosion with high temperatures. Under these conditions, the occupants of the aircraft could not have survived.
Crash after only 30 seconds
Recordings of a surveillance camera show how the aircraft was withdrawn from the runway at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Ahmedabad on Thursday at 1:38 p.m. After that, it apparently had difficulty winning. Only about 30 seconds later it fell into the residential area, just a few kilometers from the roller field. A large fireball and black smoke then rose over the houses. According to Air India, 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian were on board. In addition to the 230 passengers, two pilots and ten crew members were on the flight. The flight captain and his co-pilot are said to have been very experienced and had already taken over more than 9,000 flight hours together.
Part of the aircraft fell into the canteen of a medical university in which numerous students were said to have been lunch. Most were apparently able to save themselves, but some were caught in the flames. “We only heard an explosion,” said Mohit Chavda of the “New York Times”. “Then we only saw dust and smoke that flowed in with full force.” At least four medical students are among the dead, said the Dean of the BJ Medical College. Dozens of others are treated in the city's main hospital. It was feared that there was a higher number of dead in a residential building next to the university where doctors and their families are supposed to live.
In India it has been the hardest flight accident since 1996. It is also the first crash of a Boeing 787 since the start of the aircraft in 2011. While the possible causes have been puzzled, these should only be determined after the flight writer evaluated. A black box has already been recovered at the scene of the crash, as the British news agency Reuters reported, citing police circles. The investigators therefore want to evaluate the information contained on the device. Black boxes often provide crucial indications of why a plane crash has occurred. Among other things, they record the talks of the pilots in the cockpit as well as data at the flight altitude and travel speed. The black boxes are mostly installed in the rear of the machines, since this area is often the least damaged in the event of crashes.
Among other things, it was speculated that the rare case of a functional disorder of both turbines could have occurred at the same time. Maybe the starting flaps on the wings were not properly extended. Another option is an impairment due to a collision with birds, which are said to be in the air in the area of the airport. Such a bird strike was held responsible for the crash of the Boeing 737-800 of the South Korean Society Jeju Air in December with 179 dead.
