Air India crash witnesses recount horrific scenes of corpses and dead dogs

One witness said the smoke from the burning plane was so huge that it ‘blocked out the sun’

It was just another long and languorous summer afternoon for Chirag Patel at his mobile phone retail shop near Ahmedabad’s airport on the outskirts of the western city when he was greeted by a shocking sight in the sky – a massive Air India plane was plunging towards a building.

“We are used to seeing planes taking off or landing at the airport, but I was horrified to see one heading right at us. The plane’s tail struck a building that houses a student hostel and got stuck. The front portion broke and, after falling down, skidded for a few metres before it hit another building,” Patel told This Week in Asia.

A deafening blast followed that engulfed four blocks in flames in his neighbourhood.

“Luckily, a few of the students and other people inside, who were having a meal, could escape from the stairs at the back. We saw about two dozen people come out alive from the blaze,” he said. “We straightaway took them in our cars to a nearby government hospital.”

At least 290 people are confirmed dead in the crash of the London-bound Boeing 787 jet after take-off on Thursday from Ahmedabad airport, in one of the worst disasters in India’s aviation history.

The heat was so intense from the plane’s explosion that a few passers-by also died, Patel recalled.

“The smoke from the burning plane was so huge that it blocked out the sun for a few seconds. Everything turned pitch dark for us,” he said.

Television footage showed that the falling plane erupted into a huge jet of fire rising into the sky from beyond a row of houses and buildings, which could be spotted from miles away.

Analysts say only a detailed investigation can ascertain the cause for the Boeing Dreamliner’s crash, the first since it began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network Database.

The ill-fated plane flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India a year later, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

While this was the first 787-8 Dreamliner crash, the model has been the subject of previous investigations. The aircraft is meant to handle longer non-stop routes, similar to the Ahmedabad-London path that the doomed plane was flying, experts say.

Bhavani Singh Shekhawat witnessed the aftermath of the crash as he walked into a bank near his house.

“I suddenly heard a loud noise like dozens of gas cylinders bursting at once. I rushed out to see what was happening when I heard people shouting fire, fire,” said Shekhawat, whose house is very close to the crash site.

“I saw a wall of flames not too far from my house. Two of us, who live quite close by, got on a bike to go to the crash site, but we had to stop about a couple of hundred metres away from the site because the heat was too intense,” Shekhawat told This Week in Asia.

Five stray dogs, who must have been close to the accident site, were burnt to death, he said.

Firefighters reached within a few minutes and started hosing down the wreckage, working frantically to save people who were inside the plane, he added.

“We were hoping that at least a few people would be saved. But in our heart of hearts, we knew that it was virtually impossible as we had seen the condition of the dogs, which were outside the crash site,” Patel said.

Police personnel too joined the rescue efforts, but were unable to control the blaze for hours despite joining forces with the firefighters, he said.

“We saw around forty corpses of the air crash victims being pulled out from the wreckage, but none came out alive. We later heard that one passenger escaped after somehow jumping out of the emergency exit of the plane moments after it fell down,” Shekhawat said.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad Airport, shortly after the aircraft departed a runway, it gave a “Mayday” call, signalling an emergency but thereafter, there was no response from the pilots.

Flightradar24 also said it received the last signal from the aircraft seconds after it took off. Boeing said it was ready to support Air India following the crash.

“A team of rescuers from the police and National Disaster Relief Force are still working away, trying to salvage the bodies of the victims. It’s a tough job because the plane is so badly mangled,” Shekhawat said.

Both Shekhawat and Patel say that visuals of the plane and the crash victims would be seared in their brains forever.

“We used to see planes flying over our heads all the time and not give a second thought. But since yesterday evening, we can’t help but look upwards whenever we hear a plane passing by,” Shekhawat said.