Air India plane crash: Pilot’s frantic mayday call revealed

The pilot of doomed flight AI 171 put out a frantic final call for help before the jet exploded as the plane’s Australian links have been revealed.

The pilot of the doomed Air India plane desperately tried to warn air traffic control that the Dreamliner plane was “losing power” just moments before it crashed soon after takeoff, killing 241 on board and more than 50 people on the ground.

The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a busy suburb just seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport, claiming the lives of all but one passenger.

Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of flying experience, made a desperate mayday call before the aircraft went down. Picture: Supplied

Officer Clive Kunder, from Mumbai, was also on the doomed Air India flight that crashed moments after takeoff. Picture: Supplied

Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had 8200 hours of flying experience, put out a distress signal, saying: “Mayday … no thrust, losing power, unable to lift” before the aircraft went down and hit a student doctors’ residence.

Footage appears to show Captain Sabharwal and Clive Kundar, his co-pilot with 1100 hours of experience, hopelessly trying to nudge up the nose of their sinking aircraft moments before the devastating impact.

Luggage is strewn on the street after Air India flight AI 171 went down. Picture: Supplied

It was also revealed the plane had carried hundreds of passengers to and from Australia just days earlier.

On June 8, the Dreamliner flew into Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport as flight AI308 landing at 9.08pm on Sunday. It departed at 11.18pm as flight AI309 back to Delhi.

There were no reports of any incident while it was in Australia.

Air India began making flights to Australia in 2013 with flights from Delhi to both Sydney and Melbourne using 787s.

The Air India flight seconds before it went down. Picture: Supplied

The plane exploded just kilometres from the runway. Picture: Supplied

After its Melbourne legs, the plane then flew from Delhi to both Paris and Tokyo return, repositioned to Ahmedabad and then took off for London when the fatal incident occurred. It had been due to fly from London to Goa.

Almost 450,000 people travelled from India to Australia in 2024. It is now the fifth biggest market for travel to Australia after New Zealand, China, the UK and US.

Air India confirmed that 241 of the 242 people aboard the flight died in the crash.

Miracle British survivor Vishwashkumar Ramesh, who was flying alongside his brother, remembers “a loud noise … then the plane crashed”.

A piece of the wing off the Air India flight. Picture: Supplied

The tail of the plane sticks out from a doctors’ college. Picture: Supplied

The Boeing was not much more than 120 metres above ground when the two experienced pilots on-board apparently lost power in both engines.

They then had 17 seconds to wrestle with the controls before the passenger jet smashed into a medical college packed with doctors, sending a fireball soaring into the sky.

Distressing video footage shows the jet’s fateful last moments as it rapidly lost altitude and speed, which would have filled the cockpit with a cacophony of terrifying alarms.

Instead of its scheduled 6800 kilometre, nine-hour 50-minute non-stop flight to Gatwick, the Air India flight came down just 2.5 kilometres beyond the end of the runway, in the densely populated Meghaninagar neighbourhood of the city in Gujarat, northwest India.

The jet smashed into the doctors’ hostel of BJ Medical College, sending debris, smoke and fire hundreds of feet into the air, and turning the whole area into what looked like a war zone.

As well as most on board, at least 50 people on the ground are said to have been killed and many more injured.

Originally published as Air India plane crash: Pilot’s frantic mayday call revealed