The highly experienced captain of the ill-fated Air India flight issued desperate “mayday” calls in the final moments before the Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed in western India, killing 241 of the 242 people on board.
Flight AI171 had barely taken off from Ahmedabad for London’s Gatwick when it came down at 1.39pm on Thursday. In a double tragedy, the aircraft crashed into a medical college hostel building, killing at least eight more people on the ground.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, a British citizen visiting family in India, was the lone survivor from the plane. Describing the terrifying moments of the crash, he told local daily Hindustan Times: “Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.”
The aircraft was being flown by Sumeet Sabharwal, a 60-year-old Line Training Captain with more than 8,200 flying hours under his belt.
He was months away from retirement.
Sabharwal was regarded as a disciplined and professional pilot who had no complaints against him.
Sabharwal and his co-pilot, First Officer Clive Kunder, 34, issued a distress call shortly after take-off, saying the plane was losing power.
“Mayday,” Sabharwal said in a desperate last call to air traffic controllers as the aircraft struggled to gain altitude after leaving the runway, “no thrust, losing power, unable to lift.”
Footage of the take-off showed the plane rapidly losing altitude and speed, its nose pitched up in a futile effort to gain momentum before it sank and crashed into a fireball.
The pilot of the ill-fated Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad was Captain Sumit Sabarwal, a resident of Jal Vayu Vihar, Powai. This evening, MP @Mi_DilipLande visited his residence to offer condolences to the grieving family. #planecrash #Ahmedabad #AhmedabadPlaneCrash pic.twitter.com/GNCJrjq7PZ
— My Powai (@mypowai) June 12, 2025
Kunder, the co-pilot originally from the southern state of Karnataka, was certified to operate the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
He had trained at the Paris Air Flight School in Florida but had not yet logged the 1,500 flying hours required under Indian regulation to qualify as a commander. He assisted Captain Sabharwal during the flight’s critical final moments.
Bollywood actor Vikrant Massey mourned Kunder’s death while revealing a personal connection. “My heart breaks for the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the unimaginably tragic crash. It pains even more to know my uncle, Clifford Kunder, lost his son Clive, who was the first officer on that fateful flight.”
The cabin of the doomed flight was manned by an all-India crew of Shradha Dhavan, Aparna Mahadik, Saineeta Chakravarti, Nganthoi Sharma Kongbrailatpam, Deepak Pathak, Irfan Shaikh, Manisha Thapa, Roshni Songhare Rajendra, Maithili Patil, and Lamnunthem Singson.
Kongbrailatpam’s sister said it had been her sister’s dream to become a flight attendant. “We couldn't chat on video as usual due to the internet ban. But she messaged me while I was in school that she would be flying to London and that she would be unreachable,” Gitanjali Sharma Kongbrailatpam told NDTV.
“She said she would return on 15 June. I wished her a safe flight and told her we would contact her when we get the internet connection back. Then we heard of the plane crash from an aunt on the phone. She said that an Air India flight had crashed in Ahmedabad, the plane was going to London. This is how we confirmed it.”
It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, which began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The plane that crashed on Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in early 2014, Flightradar24 said.
