Hundreds Dead in Air India Plane Crash

An Air India flight bound for London crashed only seconds after takeoff in western India on Thursday, plunging into a local medical college and killing more than 260 people, officials said.

It was India’s worst aviation disaster since 1996.

Video verified by The New York Times shows the plane taking off and then descending slowly over a cluster of buildings as if it were gliding before a large fireball erupts on the horizon. It did not tumble or plunge out of the sky, and was in the air for less than a minute, the video shows.

Air India confirmed that 241 people — all but one person on the plane — were killed, and that one person, a British citizen, had survived.

A video clip circulating on Indian news outlets shows a man with injuries on his face and blood on his white shirt limping toward an ambulance, saying he came from “inside” the plane.

The crash’s sole survivor was later identified by his brother as Viswash Kumar Ramesh.

“He got off the plane and he video-called my dad and said, ‘Our plane crashed — I have no idea how I got outside, or how I survived,’” the brother, Nayan Ramesh, said in an interview.

Viswash Kumar Ramesh had been traveling on the plane with another brother, Ajay Ramesh. “He was like, ‘I can’t see my brother — I can’t see any other passengers,’” Nayan Ramesh said, quoting his brother on the video call. “I don’t know how I am alive,” Nayan Ramesh said his brother added.