More than 200 people were killed when an Air India plane traveling to London crashed in Ahmedabad, India, an official said. At least one person survived.

More than 200 people were killed on Thursday when an Air India passenger plane bound for London crashed in the city of Ahmedabad, India. There were 242 people on board, and there was at least one survivor, India’s home minister said.

The crash is India’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1996 and one of the deadliest in recent history.

G.S. Malik, the city’s police commissioner, said in an interview that 204 bodies had been recovered and that 41 people were being treated for injuries.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a medical school dining hall, where at least five students died, the school’s dean said in an interview. It was not immediately clear if the five medical students were part of Mr. Malik’s tally of casualties.

Where and when did the crash take place?

The plane crashed near the airport in Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, on the campus of a local medical college, according to an official from the Bharatiya Janata Party, the state’s governing party.

Flight AI171 “was involved in an accident today after takeoff” at 1:38 p.m. local time, Air India confirmed.

The plane was over a decade old, Flightradar24 records show.

Minakshi Parikh, the dean B.J. Medical College, said the plane hit a dining hall while 60 to 80 students were inside. “Most of the students escaped, but 10 or 12 were trapped in the fire,” she said.

Who was on the flight?

Air India said the plane’s 242 passengers and crew members included 169 Indians, 53 British citizens, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian.

India’s home minister, Amit Shah, told reporters in Ahmedabad that he had met the one survivor. The man has not been officially identified, but news reports have named a passenger they described as a British national.

One passenger, Vijay Rupani, was Gujarat’s former chief minister, who led the state until 2021, according to a passenger list confirmed by his party’s officials.

Three passengers were identified by a Muslim community group in Gloucester, England. In a tribute on its Facebook page, the group identified Akeel Nanabawa, his wife, Hannaa, and their daughter Sara. All three appeared on a passenger manifest viewed by The New York Times.

What was the cause of the crash?

It was not immediately clear.

Plane crash investigations are complex, and it can take months or even years to identify what went wrong. But video and photos of the Air India crash on Thursday prompted questions from aviation experts.

A widely shared video showed the plane descending over buildings with its nose pointed upward, an unusual position, said John Cox, a former airline pilot and chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm.

The plane’s orientation looks as if “it should be climbing and, in fact, it’s descending,” he said. “The question is why.”

He and other experts cautioned against jumping to conclusions. Planes and the aviation system have many redundancies to prevent a single problem from leading to a calamity. As a result, crashes are typically caused by multiple failures, include equipment malfunctions, improper maintenance, bird strikes or pilot error.

What is Air India’s safety record?

The country’s flagship carrier has worked to improve its safety record after a number of dangerous episodes nearly 15 years ago.

Its last major crash was in 2020, when a passenger plane from Air India Express, a subsidiary, skidded and cracked in two on a rain-soaked runway in the southern Indian state of Kerala. At least 17 people died in that accident, in which visibility was poor.

In 2010, an Air India Express plane overshot a hilltop runway in Mangalore, in the western state of Karnataka. It burst into flames, killing more than 150 people. In 2009, there were three near-misses at the Mumbai airport.

What do we know about the Boeing Dreamliner?

No fatal episodes involving the Dreamliner have been recorded to date, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

And no Dreamliners, also known as 787s, have been destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair, which is called a “hull loss” in the aviation industry, according to Boeing’s most recent annual summary of incidents and accidents released in April 2025.

The Dreamliner has, however, experienced problems that have resulted in passenger injuries.

In November, a 787 flight by Latam Airlines of Chile “experienced a sudden descent while in cruise,” resulting in two serious injuries, Boeing data show.

The company has faced serious safety concerns raised by whistle-blowers. The Federal Aviation Administration said in April 2024 that it was looking into claims by a Boeing engineer that parts of the 787 Dreamliner fuselage were improperly fastened.

That engineer, Sam Salehpour, said the fuselage could break apart mid-flight after thousands of trips. Large pieces came from different manufacturers, he said, and were not exactly the same shape when they fit together.

Boeing said it had done extensive testing on the Dreamliner and was “fully confident” in the plane.

In a statement on Thursday, Boeing said it was “working to gather more information” about the Air India crash.