A 17-year-old witnessed the devastating Air India plane crash last week while visiting his family and recalled the harrowing moments before it claimed 241 lives onboard

A teenager who was innocently filming a plane taking off ended up witnessing the horrific Air India crash in real time.

On Thursday afternoon, Aryan Ansari stood on a terrace of a three-storey building to take a video on his phone of the Boeing 787 after it left Ahmedabad airport.

The teen was unaware of the horror that was seconds away and was simply recording the aircraft in a bid to show his friends “how planes fly.”

But catastrophe struck when the Air India flight AI 171, which was headed for London Gatwick, crashed into a medical college hostel in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad just minutes after take-off.

The crash tragically claimed the lives of 241 people on board – 53 of whom were British – and at least 29 on the ground. One lone passenger remarkably survived.

The wreckage of the Air India Boeing 787(Image: Getty Images)

Aryan, who had been visiting his father in Gujarat with his sister, spoke to the local media after witnessing the plane crash. He said: “I came here on June 12. The plane was passing very close, so I thought of shooting a video to show to my friends.

“The plane went downwards, and I thought it was going to land as the airport was nearby. But when it went down, flames started shooting up, and I saw that it had exploded. I was scared. I showed the video to my sister. I also told my father about it.”

The shocked teen also said that despite his dreams of flying, he is now put off from setting foot on an aircraft after seeing the tragic scene unfold.

Aryan said he wanted to purchase textbooks during his stay with his father in Ahmedabad and reportedly returned to the Aravalli district on Sunday to continue with his studies.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad Airport, the aircraft departed at 1:39pm local time and almost immediately gave a Mayday call, signalling an emergency. The plane failed to respond further, and footage shows the plane was only in the air for around 30 seconds before it appeared to run into trouble, according to the BBC.

Several theories have been proposed about what happened that day, but investigators will examine the evidence to determine the exact cause.

Brit Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, miraculously emerged as the only survivor of the doomed Boeing 787 flight. Incredibly, Vishwash managed to walk away from the wreckage after the central section of the plane, where he was seated in seat 11A, was spared from the worst of the impact.

Speaking after the crash, he recalled: “I still can’t believe how I came out of it alive. For a moment, I felt like I was going to die too.”

Vishwash Kumar Rames is the sole survivor of the Air India plane crash

Vishwash added: “When I opened my eyes and looked around, I realised I was alive. I still can’t believe how I survived.”

In the wake of the disaster, hundreds of grieving family members provided DNA samples at the hospital to identify victims.