Ahmedabad plane crash: When Air India jet became fireball; how 1,000 degrees Celsius inferno made escape impossible

NEW DELHI: The raging inferno at the crash site of the Air India plane in Ahmedabad reached temperatures of nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius, making rescue operations nearly impossible, officials said on Thursday night. The extreme heat consumed everything in its path — even birds and dogs couldn't escape.

The London-bound Air India flight, carrying 242 passengers and crew, crashed into a residential area near the city airport minutes after takeoff on Thursday afternoon.

“There was 1.25 lakh litres of fuel inside the plane and it caught fire, so it was impossible to save anyone,” Union minister Amit Shah told reporters last night.


A State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) official said their teams reached the crash site, the hostel and residential quarters of doctors and staff at BJ Medical College, between 2 and 2.30 pm. Locals had already pulled out a few people alive, but once the fire intensified, no more survivors could be found.

“As the (aircraft's fuel) tank exploded, it created an inferno where temperature rose to 1,000 degrees Celsius in no time. This left little chance for anyone to escape,” said a senior fire official told news agency PTI.

An SDRF responder said that though he had dealt with crisis situations before, nothing matched what he witnessed Thursday. “We came with PPE kits. But the temperature was so high, it made operations difficult. There were debris everywhere, already simmering, and we had to clear them,” he said.

He claimed his team recovered 25–30 bodies, including those of children. “DNA tests will have to be done for recognition of bodies,” he added.

Another SDRF official said he lost count of how many bodies he removed. “It was so quick that even animals and birds got little time to escape,” he said, pointing to carcasses in the residential complex.

Besides passengers and crew members, students and others on the BJ Medical College premises were among those killed. Police said 265 bodies were brought to the civil hospital.

A local resident of Meghani Nagar in Gujarat's Ahmedabad, who lives close to the crash site, also recounted the horror.

Speaking to ANI, he termed the incident a "horrible sight" to witness, stating that there were half-cut and completely burnt bodies all over the area.

A local who resides near the AI-171 crash site said, "My son was there... He called me and told about the plane crash incident. My house is located 100-200m away from the crash site. The fire was still burning when I arrived... In 5-7 minutes, fire department, CISF and authorities reached at the spot. It was a horrible sight to witness. There were half-cut and completely burnt bodies all over the area... Meghaninagar has active roads. The situation of local commuters is still not known..."

Another local said, "My house is 700m away from the crash site. We got to know that a massive fire had broken out...I reached the spot and I saw that the police, the fire department and a lot of local people, including workers of the BJP, have also come there...It was a very horrible scene, as everywhere there were bodies, completely burnt bodies."