Global News Podcast - Air India plane crash: Only one survivor of 242 people on board

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

An investigation is underway into the crash of Air India flight AI-171, which went down shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad. Also: scientists discover a previously unknown species of dinosaur in Mongolia.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charles Haveland and in the early hours of Friday the 13th of June, India has confirmed that only one of the 242 people on board its flight that crashed into a doctor's hostel in Ahmedabad has survived. Also in this podcast... Looking at it, I started to realize that it was actually kind of a very important specimen because it represented an ancestor to some of those gigantic apex predators that we would see appear later in time like T. rex. Scientists have discovered a previously unknown species of dinosaur after delving into a fossil collection in a Mongolian museum.

Air India has confirmed that all but one of the 242 people on board its flight that crashed in Ahmedabad were killed. The sole survivor is being treated in hospital. The Boeing Dreamliner 787 was bound for London when it crashed on Thursday into a medical college hostel shortly after takeoff. It's believed local doctors were having a meal at the time of the accident and it's feared there are also many casualties on the ground. Our correspondent in India, Devina Gupta, followed the day's events. day's events. Around 1.30pm local time, an Air India dreamliner lifting off from Ahmedabad airport heading for London. 30 seconds later, a deafening sound, flames and a cloud of black smoke as the airliner came down in a heavily populated residential area of the city. An eyewitness described what happened.

I was sitting at home. There was a loud noise. It felt like an earthquake. I came out and saw smoke. I didn't know it was a plane crash. Then I came here, and then I found out. And I saw the crash plane. There were many bodies lying on the ground.

The Boeing 787 was carrying 242 passengers and crew. A major rescue operation was soon underway. Firefighters trying to douse the flames from the crash site, paramedics tending to the injured, and India's aviation minister Ram Kinchurapu travelled to the scene of the crash. Right now if you ask me, I can only think about the passengers, their families and especially the civilians also who are there near the crash site. A lot of relief effort has been done already from Indian Army, State Police, medical departments,

everyone has attended immediately the fire department. To the best of their abilities they have been functioning here and doing the fire department. To the best of their abilities, they have been functioning here and doing the rescue operations. Once India's national carrier, Air India is now owned by the Tata Group. Its CEO, Campbell Wilson, gave the company's reaction in a video posted on the ex-social media site. We are actively working with the authorities

on all emergency response efforts. A special team of caregivers from Air India is on their way to Ahmedabad to provide additional support. The investigations will take time, but anything we can do now, we are doing. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a flagship model for the US plane maker, which until now had an excellent safety record. Mirza Faizan was involved in its design. It is stronger and lighter than previous aircraft. State of the art avionics systems. I'm into avionics, so I have personally

worked on the design and development of the pilots. And they did not have enough time to do various recovery maneuvers, because the height was so less. It just ended in a matter of seconds. For now, it's a long hard wait for families trying to find what has happened to missing relatives. The questions about what caused this crash are only just beginning. Divina Gupta in Delhi. The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the disaster as heart-breaking beyond words.

As we heard earlier, one passenger survived the crash. A British man, Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, was on board the flight sitting beside his brother. He was returning to his home in central England after a holiday. Video shared on social media showed Mr Ramesh, after the crash in India, walking towards an ambulance with smoke billowing in the background. Caroline Hawley has more details. First news that anyone had managed to escape the horror of Flight AI 171 alive was reported in India with incredulity.

So this happens to be the video of what is possibly the only person to survive this horrible accident. Miraculous it is. And we really don't know how he managed to do that. The video shows Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, a father of one, limping away with blood and what looked like burns on his face. He appears to be in shock as he tells bystanders repeatedly that he's come from the crashed plane. Later, from a hospital bed, he tells the Hindustan Times that he and his brother had been visiting family for a few days and were travelling home. Fishwash was in seat 11A, which was close to an emergency exit.

He described hearing a loud noise 30 seconds into the flight and then the crash. It all happened so quickly, he said. He told the paper that when he got up, there were bodies all around him and pieces of the plane. He was scared and he got up and ran. Speaking to the BBC, his cousin AJ Valgi said that Vishwas had called to say that he was OK. But there's no news yet of his other cousin. We at least know that Vishwas is OK, but we're still upset about the other brother. Not just because he's our brother, but other people as well. Vishwas's escape is one extraordinary story of survival amid such devastating loss.

Caroline Hawley, the chief executive of Air India, says it will take time for investigators to find out the cause of the crash in Ahmedabad. US air safety experts are being sent along with officials from the plane maker Boeing and the engine manufacturer GE Aerospace. Details of the possible cause are still emerging. We do know that tracking data shows the flight abruptly came to an end shortly after it left the runway. An aviation consultant and former aircraft accident investigator Tim Atkinson told us what a video of the plane taking off reveals. We can see the aircraft apparently remains under control. The

wings remain level, the direction remains steady and the aircraft lifts off apparently normally to my eye and shortly after lift off the flight path changes and although the aircraft pitch attitude remains positive that's to say the nose is above the horizon it starts to descend. I'm hopeful in this case that the flight recorders will be recovered promptly. That the plane involved was a Boeing, a 787 Dreamliner may also have repercussions for its manufacturer. I spoke to our transport correspondent Nick Marsh on Thursday evening and asked him first about previous crashes involving Boeing aircraft. The two most prominent ones were one in Indonesia and another in Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019 respectively hundreds of people died in those crashes.

Today's is different of course. They were 737 MAX planes. Today's was a 787 Dreamliner with an exemplary safety record. It's carried over a billion passengers over the last 14 years or so. The 737 MAX was found to have faulty software, and it was Boeing's fault. Today's incident, I mean, there is absolutely no indication at all that this had anything to do with any manufacturer faults. We don't know whether it did or we don't know whether it didn't.

As you just, Tim, say there, a lot hinges on the flight recording devices, aka the black boxes. They should shed quite a lot of light on what actually happened in that minute or so between takeoff and then the plane unfortunately coming down. The fallout from those deadly crashes, as you mentioned, in Ethiopia and Indonesia is still going on and Boeing is still going through a bit of a crisis, is it not? Absolutely. Crisis might even be an understatement. Last year, it was losing an average of a billion dollars a month partly due to all these settlements it was having to pay out related to the crashes, partly due to it having to ground its 737 Max

fleet for 18 months after those crashes. There's criminal proceedings being brought against Boeing, civil proceedings as well and a crisis of safety culture as they call it in the aviation industry. You know, whistleblowers coming out saying that procedures weren't followed properly, whistleblowers being bullied allegedly for coming forward about problems with Boeing. So, you know, it's facing a crisis on many, many fronts. Its new chief executive came in about a year ago. He promised to turn the fortunes of Boeing around, and things were getting better were getting better but you know this is going to be another problem for Boeing

obviously with the massive caveat that I should stress that we really do not know why this plane came down today and Boeing says all of its you know thoughts are with those affected and it's it's going to be working with Air India to establish exactly what happened in Umbarabad. Nick Marsh. Now to the US, where Alex Padilla, a Democratic California Senator and vocal critic of Donald Trump's immigration policies, was forced to the floor, handcuffed and removed by federal agents. This was after he interrupted a news conference

by the Homeland Security Secretary Kristiy Noem, in Los Angeles. Here is the moment Senator Padilla was forced out of the room. And in balancing, sir, sir, hands up, hands up. Senator Alex Padilla, I have a question for the secretary because the fact of the matter is a half a dozen violent criminals that you're rotating on your... I asked our North America correspondent Peter Bose to put into context what we just heard. She was giving a news conference, Christy Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, at a federal building in Los Angeles.

She was talking about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts that we've been hearing all about for the past few days in LA and the impact on people here. Alex Padilla, who as you said is a Democratic California senator, he's a former Secretary of State of California. He was in the same building for a separate meeting, heard about the news conference, went along to it and as we've just heard he interrupted and attempted to ask Kristi Noem a question. he did identify himself. He said, I am Senator Alex Padilla, I have a question for the Secretary, at which point he was manhandled out of the room by federal agents. He was forced to the ground, he was handcuffed. According to his office he was later released and he wasn't actually arrested.

What reason was Senator Padilla given for his being wrestled to the ground, According to his office he was later released and he wasn't actually arrested. What reason was Senator Padilla given for his being wrestled to the ground manhandled in this extremely tough way? Well according to Christine Noem, he was treated in this way because he hadn't initially identified himself. She said the fact that he didn't say right at the top who he was, that that was inappropriate. She said I will say that people need to identify themselves before they start, these are her words, before they start lunging at people. It wasn't becoming of a US

senator and she added that the handcuffs were released when the agents were made aware of who he was. Now I think the issue at stake is did the agents in that split second when they heard him raise his voice, did they know who he was. Now I think the issue at stake is, did the agents in that split second when they heard him raise his voice, did they know who he was? Peter Bowes in Los Angeles. Scientists have discovered a previously unknown species of dinosaur and rather like those literary discoveries from old libraries, it was hidden in plain sight in a Mongolian museum's fossil collection. It sounds as if it's a missing link on the evolution of Tyrannosaurus rex from a tiny and quick-moving two-legged dinosaur into a very big one, the T-Rex we're more familiar with.

Owen Bennett-Jones spoke to Jared Voris, a paleontologist, PhD student at Calgary University in Canada, who carried out the research in Mongolia. He first asked him with this new discovery, is his PhD now in the bag? Yes, actually getting defended next week. So I hope that this bleeds into it. I think so, yeah. Now then, so you were looking at the, yeah, as one does in a Mongolian museum, you were looking at this fossil and you thought, yikes.

Yeah, so it was actually, this whole project was kind of like an international collaboration, but it was working on trying to understand how it was that tyrannosaurs evolved. And I'd been all over the museums in North America and whatnot learning about our tyrannosaurs here. But in order to get the full picture, we needed to go to Mongolia to understand the tyrannosaurs that they have there. And yeah, while I was there, I had the chance to look at this specimen that had been described back in the 1970s. And then upon looking at it, I started to realize that it was actually kind of a very important specimen because it represented an ancestor to some of those gigantic apex predators that we would see appear later in time like T. rex. So just to be clear, this fossil was found in the 70s and misinterpreted?

Yeah, it was found originally, like it was named a species known as electrosaurus, or was identified as a species called electrosaurus that's known from China. But once we started to look at it, we recognized that the features that it had, we don't see an electrosaurus. So it was something different. It belonged to a different species that we hadn't been described before. Just to get clear how these T-Rexes developed, at the end of it they were like the size of an elephant. Your one is the size of what? Ours is about like the size of a horse. So I always jokingly call them, you know,

these predatory horses. They were probably also just as fast, so they were definitely something you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, or in this case a dark forest at night. Yeah, and then before that there were even smaller ones. They were definitely something you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley or in this case a dark forest at night. Yeah. And then before that there were even smaller ones. That's right. Yeah. So this new species kind of gives us the window into time as these tyrannosaurids or the predecessors to the tyrannosaurs were starting their ascent into that apex predatory role.

So as they were going from these much smaller ancestors to the larger ones. And this new species kind of fills that gap. Jared Voris, a PhD student at Calgary University in Canada. Still to come. We had nothing to do, no training. So we went for the tournament and Nicholas won. Apparently he had a talent for sumo. So we went for the trip in Japan and

then he was offered the place. A teenager from Northern England has been given a rare opportunity to train as a professional sumo wrestler in Japan. Next to Kenya, protesters in the capital Nairobi have set vehicles alight and police have fired tear gas to disperse crowds angered by the death of a blogger in police custody. Security officials initially said Albert Ojwang died as a result of self-inflicted injuries. But a state pathologist said there was clear evidence he had been assaulted. Our Africa regional editor Will Ross reports. The Kenyan government's under pressure on two fronts.

A large proportion of the population struggling to earn a living and pay the daily bills. There's also anger at what's seen as a broken promise by President William Ruto to end police brutality. The apparent killing of an arrested blogger in police custody and the failed attempt to make it look like a suicide has brought people onto the streets. Not many for now, but there is a danger of this escalating. Much will depend on how the state responds to protests and whether there's justice for this latest suspicious death. Will Ross. The authorities in Ghana have demanded the closure of more than 60 radio stations,

accusing them of breaking various regulations. Prominent opposition-aligned FM stations are among those affected. The National Communications Authority said some of them did not have valid authorization or had failed to renew their licenses. From Accra, Thomas Nadi reports. Many worried that directive could stifle media freedom. The founder of one of the stations linked to the opposition, Asasi FM, explained that their license was renewed only a couple of months late in December last year. The radio stations have been given a 30-day grace period

to rectify the alleged infractions. The planned closures highlight Ghana's continuing struggle with politicised media regulation, often perceived as partisan tit for tat between the two dominant political parties. Thomas Nadi reporting from Accra. Posters have begun appearing across Venice, saying no to the upcoming wedding there

of the Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos. Posters have begun appearing across Venice, saying no to the upcoming wedding there of the Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos. The billionaire is planning a three-day extravaganza in the Italian Adriatic city to celebrate his marriage to Lorenz Sanchez. Here's Elettra Naismith. News of the star-studded nuptials has had the celebrity world buzzing, but not all Venetians are quite so excited. They are anticipating

a takeover of their beloved city. Top hotels have been booked out to accommodate the billionaire's 200 plus guests, that's without the inevitable media circus, and curious tourists coming to have a look. But a group calling itself No Space for Bezos says Venice is not for sale. Posters slamming the wedding have been plastered all over town. There's even a banner on the historic San Giorgio Maggiore bell tower with the name Bezos crossed out in red. A letter from Naismith, a teenager from northern England is preparing to move to Japan after being given a rare opportunity to train as a professional sumo wrestler. Vigi Alice reports. to train as a professional sumo wrestler. Viji Alice reports.

15-year-old Nicholas Tarasenko is only the second Briton ever to earn a place at one of Japan's prestigious sumo training academies. The first was back in 1989 and he was a little older. The training center is known as Stables will become Nicholas's new home. He'll train daily in the techniques, discipline and rituals of this centuries-old sport. Nicholas's background is in judo and he only began learning sumo two years ago. He says he knows just how tough it's going to be. It's an amazing opportunity. I'm just a beginner but I've been given a chance and I intend to

go as hard as possible. I really can't wait to see what the future holds. His father, Giorgi, says Nicholas' interest in the sport started during a family visit to his grandmother in Estonia. I found the guy who ran in like the biggest European children's tournament. He's from Estonia and I just entered him into tournament because it was boring, you know, grandmas are boring sometimes. He had nothing to do, no training. So we went for the tournament and Niklas won. Apparently he had a talent for sumo. So we continued and we went for the trip in Japan.

And then he was offered the place. That unexpected start led to success in international sumo tournaments, including two gold medals at the prestigious 2024 Baruto Cup. The British sumo president, Scott Finlay, who is also the head of the British national team, has been training Nicholas. It's just been stereotyped as two big fat guys in their underwear belly bouncing each other basically, which is crazy. It's so intricate, I mean again this is a 2000 year old sport and only 75 people have reached the number one rank. It's shocking how quickly he adapted to sumo. Nicholas is just an exceptional child so in that regard I see Nicholas as long as

he stays injury free. There's no reason why he can't go right up to Sanyaku, which is the highest rankings within the sumo community. Basically, if he got there, he'd be revered in Japan as a god. Come on, Nicola! That report was by Viji Alice. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Nick Randell. The producers were Liam McShephy and Guy Pitt. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Charles Haveland. Until next time, goodbye.