The passenger plane bound for London Gatwick crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad

Wreckage of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner lies on the ground next to emergency vehicles and people

What has happened?

An Air India passenger plane bound for London Gatwick with more than 240 people onboard has crashed shortly after takeoff from the north-western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

Air India flight 171, a Boeing 787-8, also known as a Dreamliner, issued a mayday call to air-traffic control after takeoff. According to the Flightradar24 website, signal was lost seconds after takeoff when the plane had reached a height of 625ft.

The plane came down in the residential area of Meghani Nagar just after taking off at 1.38pm local time (09:08 BST).

Footage posted to social media showed the aircraft rapidly losing altitude – with its nose up – before it hit a building and exploded in a ball of fire.

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Social media footage shows moment Air India plane crashed – video

Footage from near the scene showed smoke billowing from where the plane had hit a building used as accommodation by doctors working in local hospitals.

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Smoke rises above Ahmedabad in first images from Air India plane crash – video

Debris from the plane was spread out in an area of a couple of hundred metres from the point of initial impact.

Who was onboard?

Air India said 242 people had been onboard, including two pilots and 10 cabin crew. Among those were 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese people and one Canadian, according to the airline.

What do we know about casualties?

The death toll had reached approximately 294, including people on the ground, by Thursday evening local time, Vidhi Chaudhary, a state police officer, told Reuters.

Firefighters spray water at the site
Firefighters work to put out smouldering wreckage at the crash site. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters

A photo shared by India’s Central Industrial Security Force shows debris from the plane.
The tail portion of the crashed plane. Photograph: AP

Chaudhary said police had found one survivor from the plane itself, who was in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, adding that there could be more survivors in hospital.

Seat 11A was a a window seat at the front of economy

What type of plane was involved?

The 787 Dreamliner is a wide-body, twin-engine plane that was introduced in 2011. More than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to Flightradar24. The model has been prized for being more fuel efficient and quieter than the types it replaced. Thursday’s crash is the first involving a Boeing 787, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

A plane in the sky
The Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft that crashed on Thursday pictured near Malpensa airport in Milan, Italy, in 2017. Photograph: Jan Seba/Reuters

Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max 8, fell into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people onboard. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing 157 passengers and crew members.

What do we know about the cause?

There has been no official word on possible causes, though the aviation safety consultant John Cox told Associated Press one of the questions investigators would be asking was whether the plane was properly configured for flight.

Cox emphasised it was too early to reach any conclusions but said the grainy images of the flight suggested one area of inquiry was likely to be whether the slats and flaps were in the correct position as the plane attempted to climb.

In aviation, crashes are statistically most likely to happen during landing or takeoff. An aviation safety expert told the BBC the weather had been stable and clear at the time.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report