What we know after Air India plane crashes with 242 people onboard near Ahmedabad airport

Rescue workers were searching for survivors Thursday after an Air India plane carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed shortly after takeoff from an airport in the Indian city of Ahmedabad into a building where medical students were sitting down to lunch.

While the city’s police commissioner said none of the people aboard the London-bound plane survived the crash, there were reports in the local Indian media that one man was able to escape the airliner alive. The British national, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, told Indian media that “it all happened so quickly.”

“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed,” he told The Hindustan Times. NBC News confirmed Ramesh’s name and seat number reported in local media match the flight manifest. His family confirmed to Sky News that he survived the flight, though they had not heard from another family member who they believe was on the plane.

Similarly, relatives of those who were aboard the Boeing 787 Dreamliner waited for word of their loved ones. Many were based at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad and at Gatwick Airport outside of London, which was where the flight was headed.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on X that it was sending a team of investigators to assist the Indian authorities probing the first-ever crash of this kind of Boeing airliner.

Footage posted to social media shortly after the crash and verified by NBC News showed plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the ruins of a building to the south of the airport.

And the first reports on the fate of the people aboard the flight were grim.

“It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,” G.S. Malik, police commissioner for Ahmedabad, told The Associated Press, adding that “some locals would have also died” when the plane crashed into a residential area where offices were also located.

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“Exact figures on casualties are being ascertained,” he said.

Kanan Desai, a top city police official, later told Reuters that 204 bodies had so far been recovered from the crash site and brought to local hospitals. That figure could also include those who died on the ground from the impact, he added.

The plane’s tail could be seen protruding from the wall of a building in a picture from the crash site shared on X by India’s central police force. Other images showed rescuers standing next to charred wreckage and a downed tree near a residential complex.

The plane was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members, a spokesperson for the airline told NBC News.