Air India Boeing 787 crash: Provisional death toll rises to 279, investigation into causes continues

The crash of an Air India Boeing 787 in Ahmedabad, northwest India, on Thursday left at least 279 dead, making it the world's deadliest air disaster since 2014, according to a new report released Saturday.

A total of 279 bodies or body parts have been taken to the city hospital since the disaster, a police source told Agence France Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity. The previous death toll was 265, including passengers and crew members of the plane or victims killed on the ground by its crash.

Air India Flight 171 crashed at 1:39 p.m. (0809 GMT) on Thursday, less than a minute after takeoff from London's Gatwick Airport, according to the Indian Civil Aviation Authority. It had issued a distress call almost immediately after leaving the ground before crashing into a residential area of ​​Ahmedabad beyond the airport, including a dormitory for doctors and students from a nearby hospital.

230 passengers, one survivor

According to the Indian Civil Aviation Authority, the Boeing 787 had 230 passengers on board—169 Indians, 53 British, 7 Portuguese, and one Canadian—and twelve crew members. Only one of the passengers seated at the front of the plane miraculously survived the crash and was able to extricate himself from the wreckage, injured.

"I still can't believe how I got out of all this alive," Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British man of Indian origin, told Indian television.

The new death toll released Saturday suggests that 38 people were killed on the ground when the Boeing struck a residential area outside Ahmedabad airport and exploded in an orange fireball.

"A gust of wind and smoke swept through the room where we were eating," Mohit Chavda, a doctor living in the medical staff hostel that was hit by the plane, told AFP. "It was impossible to see the person sitting next to us, so we ran away," he added.

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Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said the final death toll would be made public once all the victims' DNA identifications had been completed.

This accident is already the deadliest on the planet since the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, brought down by a missile over Ukraine in July 2014 while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. This crash left 298 people dead, including 193 Dutch nationals.

Investigators recovered one of the plane's two black boxes, the flight data recorder, on Friday and continued to search the site on Saturday for the second, the cockpit voice recorder.

The discovery of the first recorder constitutes "an important step in the investigation into the causes of the accident," Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said on Friday. The minister was due to hold a press conference early Saturday afternoon in New Delhi.

According to a source close to the case, this crash is the first of a Boeing B-787 Dreamliner, a long-haul aircraft that entered service in 2011. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg has canceled his visit to Le Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis), where the world's largest air show opens on Monday.

British and American investigation agencies have announced that they are sending teams to assist their Indian counterparts at the Aircraft Accidents Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is in charge of the investigation.

Many experts said it was still too early to explain the cause of the disaster. Videos of the crash posted on social media showed the plane taking off, then unable to gain altitude, before falling heavily to the ground.

Civil aviation authorities on Friday ordered a "precautionary" inspection of Boeing 787s in service with Air India, including their engines, flaps (on the wings) and landing gear.