The captain of doomed Air India Flight 171 has been credited with saving dozens of lives by guiding the jet away from a row of apartment blocks moments before impact.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, an experienced pilot with more than 8,200 hours in the cockpit, was at the controls when his Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London Gatwick lost thrust seconds after leaving India’s Ahmedabad airport on Thursday.
He and co-pilot First Officer Clive Kunder placed a mayday call, but they had little over a minute after the engines lost power before ploughing into the ground.
The gigantic passenger jet was headed towards the B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital and a street of residential properties nearby – until the powerless aircraft banked slightly seconds before it hit the ground and exploded.
All but one of the 242 passengers and crew members on board were killed.
Several medical students were also killed when the aircraft’s landing gear and part of the rear of the jet clipped a dormitory for medical students working at the hospital.
But residents of the nearby apartments hailed Captain Sabharwal, 56, as a hero for avoiding their homes and saving yet more lives in the process.
‘Thanks to the pilot Captain Sabharwal, we survived. He’s a hero. It is because of him we are alive,’ resident Jahanvi Rajput, 28, told The Sun.
‘The green space next to us was visible to him and that’s where he went.’
Mum-of-two Chancal Bai, 50, added: ‘If the plane had crashed into this residential area, there would have been hundreds more victims.’
It comes as an Indian politician revealed the fallen captain had told his elderly father just days before the fatal crash that he was planning to quit flying so he could take care of him.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, left, and First Officer Clive Kunder, right, avoided several apartment blocks before crashing
The Gatwick-bound plane carrying 242 passengers, including 53 British nationals, crashed just moments after take-off from Ahmedabad Airport in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat on Thursday
The plane crashed into a fireball after a suspected double-engine failure shortly after takeoff
Wreckage of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner lies at the site where the Air India plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
Officials have found the second black box from the doomed Air India flight 171 which will reveal a second-by-second reconstruction of the events that led to the fatal fireball crash
The father of Captain Sabharwal is pictured shortly after learning of the death of his son
The tragic turn of events was made public by Member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Dilip Lande, who paid a visit to Captain Sabharwal’s 82-year-old father at his home that he shared with his late son in the Powai suburb of Mumbai.
‘Only a few days ago (Captain Sabharwal) told his father that he will be quitting his job to look after him full time,’ Lande told reporters.
The Captain’s father, who worked for India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) prior to his retirement, was reportedly inconsolable upon learning of his son’s fate.
‘Whenever he flew out, Sumeet would ask us to keep an eye on his father. He has now been left devastated,’ neighbours told The Hindustan Times.
Meanwhile, Wing Commander Sanjay Pai, a family friend of Sabharwal, described him as a ‘good member of society’ and said the community was reeling at the news of his demise.
‘When society members learned about his death yesterday, we all went into shock. Many people came to meet his family. It is hard to believe he is gone,’ he told India Today.
Now, investigators from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) will analyse the wreckage of the jet along with the contents of the black boxes recovered from the crash site.
These small but tough electronic flight data recorders are made with robust materials such as titanium or steel and insulated with fire-resistant materials to withstand extreme conditions during a crash.
One records flight data, such as altitude and speed and the other contains the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), capturing all audio from the cockpit, including pilot conversations, radio transmissions, warning alarms and ambient mechanical sounds.
The devices should allow investigators to piece together a second-by-second reconstruction of the events that led to the fatal fireball.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner careened back down to earth in the densely populated Meghani area of the city just minutes after leaving the runway around 1.40pm local time (8.10am BST) on Thursday.
All but one person on board the plane – a British national sitting in seat 11A – were killed in the crash. Emergency and rescue services say they have recovered 270 bodies from the site, including around 30 people killed when the plane hit the medical dormitory.
Parts of the jet crashed into the BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital
Remnants of the fuselage and the landing gear were seen dangling through a gaping hole in the side of the canteen, with half-finished plates of food clearly visible on benches inside
Rescue team members work as smoke rises at the site in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
Chunks of the plane’s fuselage and tail were seen protruding from a demolished building
A family member cries upon hearing the news of her brother who died when the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
Wreckage of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner lies at the site, showing part of its registration ‘VT-ANB’, where the Air India plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
As the investigation continues, the sole survivor of the disaster told reporters how he ‘just walked out’ of the damaged jet as it lay at the crash site moments before it was engulfed in flames.
British national Viswash Kumar Ramesh, 40, said that he was in India with his brother for the best part of a year and was returning to London, where his family live, on the Gatwick-bound aircraft on Thursday.
He was seated in 11A on the doomed flight from Ahmedabad, one of the worst in India’s aviation history.
While sitting up on a hospital bed, he told DD India this weekend that he was ‘feeling better’ and that the ‘treatment is going good’.
Still in shock, he admitted he ‘can’t explain’ everything that he witnessed as the plane plummeted to the ground.
He managed to escape after the plane rolled slightly after impact, leaving his side of the jet close to the ground.
He forced his way out of the plane through a broken door and was greeted by stunned locals before being bundled into an ambulance.
‘The emergency door was broken, my seat is broken,’ he said.
Asked if he escaped the plane by jumping to the ground, he replied: ‘I am not jumping. I just walked out innit.’
‘It’s a miracle,’ he said when discussing his survival and injuries.
His doctor added: ‘He is having minor injuries only. He has some abrasions over his left forearm and swelling over left eyelid and over the eyes.
‘Chest and abdomen is clear, no lung fractures present. The patient is vitally stable.’
The sole survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was visited by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in hospital
While sitting up in his seat, he told DD India, that he was ‘feeling better than yesterday’ and that the ‘treatment is going good’
Astonishing footage showed the man walking away from the scene with some visible injuries to his face
Alongside the formal investigation into Flight 171’s demise by the AAIB, the Indian government has set up a high-level committee to examine the causes leading to the crash.
The committee will focus on formulating procedures to prevent and handle aircraft emergencies in the future, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement Saturday.
Authorities have also begun inspecting Air India’s entire fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners, Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said Saturday in New Delhi at his first news briefing since the crash on Thursday.
Eight of the 34 Dreamliners in India have already undergone inspection, Kinjarapu said, adding that the remaining aircraft will be examined with ‘immediate urgency.’
It comes as another Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane bound for New Delhi turned back to its departure airport in Hong Kong early this morning after the pilot suspected a technical issue mid-air, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Air India flight AI315 is now undergoing checks, said the source with knowledge of the matter.
Flight AI315 took off from Hong Kong at 12:16pm local time and landed just over an hour later, according to tracking data on Flightradar24.
Boeing and Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Hong Kong-New Delhi flight.
