The London-bound plane, carrying 242 passengers and crew, went down shortly after taking off from the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. Only one person survived.
The deadly accident has raised questions about what possibly went wrong for the Boeing Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.
Analysts say pinpointing the reason will need a deep and detailed study, but the manner in which the plane heading for Gatwick Airport hit a building and exploded into a fireball is bound to cast doubts about management of its operations.
“It looks like he [the pilot] had no power available and could not continue his climb. That is a technical issue. It brings up a whole lot of other issues as well about how the airline is being run,” said Mark D Martin, CEO of aviation consultancy Martin Consulting.
Ahmedabad deputy police chief Kanan Desai said that “265 bodies have reached the hospital”, suggesting that at least 24 people died when the aircraft ploughed into a medical college hostel outside the airport during lunch hour.
It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, which began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. The ill-fated plane flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India a year later, flight-tracking website Flightradar24 said.
