Air India crash: How the plane travelled to and from Melbourne Airport just days ago – amid warning incident could have happened in Australia
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The doomed Air India plane that crashed on Thursday, killing 240 people, had flown out of Australia just days before causing the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
Air India flight AI171 crashed moments after taking off from Ahmedabad in western India, bound for London on Thursday afternoon local time.
Footage showed the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner carrying 242 passengers began losing altitude seconds after takeoff and crashed into a medical college hostel.
On June 8, just four days before the crash, the same plane – with registration VT-ANB – flew in-and-out from Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport.
Flight AI308 landed in Melbourne at 9.08pm on Sunday before taking off for a return flight AI309 to Delhi at 11.18pm, according to FlightRadar 24.
A spokesperson for Melbourne Airport confirmed the flight data with Daily Mail Australia.
It landed in Delhi at 7.06am before flights to and from Tokyo and Paris over the next three days before arriving at Ahmedabad at 11.16am on the morning of June 12.
Aviaton Projects managing director Keith Tonkin told Daily Mail Australia investigations into the crash would be needed to determine whether there was a technical fault with the plane that was present during the Melbourne journeys.
Air India flight AI171 is pictured taking off from Ahmedabad bound for London on the afternoon of Thursday June 12 moments before it began plummeting towards the ground
A fireball erupted over the city skyline upon impact with the ground, killing all but one of the flight’s 242 passengers
The tail of the plane is pictured protruding from a building near Ahmedabad airport
‘Investigators will focus on what happened in the time period between the pilots deciding to continue the take-off at their decision point and the point at which the aircraft started its downward trajectory towards the impact site,’ he said.
‘Was there a sudden loss of thrust, were the lift devices on the wings correctly configured, and why wasn’t the landing gear retracted?
‘If the primary causal factor(s) could be replicated at a different airport under similar circumstances, then it would be fair to conclude that the accident could happen at Melbourne Airport.’
A video posted to social media showed the plane soon losing upward momentum following takeoff and drifting downward before disappearing from the camera’s view behind apartment buildings.
Moments later, a fireball erupted over the skyline after it crashed into BJ Medical College Hostel directly south-west of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport.
Air India has since confirmed only one passenger, a British man, survived the crash with additional deaths on the ground also having been reported.
Images taken by Associated Press captured the ash-strewn interior of the medical college hostel canteen, where half-eaten dishes remained after the lunchtime crash.
Pictured is the interior of BJ Medical College Hostel directly south-west of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport
Search and recovery teams are pictured working through the rubble of the plane crash
The Federation of All India Medical Association said 50 to 60 students were admitted to hospital.
Indian civil aviation authorities have confirmed personnel on the plane placed a mayday call to air traffic control less than a minute after take-off.
FlightTracker24 said the plane careened towards the ground at a speed of approximately 475feet (or 145metres) per minute.
It is not yet known what caused the crash though US transportation secretary Sean Duffy has said there was ‘no indication’ of safety concerns with other planes of the same make – a 787-8 Dreamliner.
Hindustan Times identified the sole survivor of the crash as British father Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, who was reportedly assigned seat 11A, and remarkably walked away from the crash.
‘Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed,’ he told the Indian English-language newspaper from a local hospital.
‘It all happened so quickly.’
Air India said the passengers of the flight included 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian nationals.
A source told Reuters 217 adults were onboard the flight along with 11 children and two infants.
It is believed to be the deadliest aviation incident since all 298 passengers of flight Malaysian Airlines MH17 died when the jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
World leaders have issued messages of support, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who described the incident as ‘heartbreaking beyond words’.
