The pilot of a London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed in Ahmedabad, India, Thursday made a frantic mayday call just seconds before the catastrophe. Senior captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his co-captain, Clive Kunder, began to lose control of the plane’s engines seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport at 1:39 pm local time. The plane was just 400 feet in the air when he made the call, Indian authorities told CNN. The authorities confirmed Sabharwal, who had 8,200 flight hours, made the distress call to air traffic control less than a minute after takeoff, saying, “Mayday… no thrust, losing power, unable to lift.” The captain then lost signal at around 625 feet. The plane crashed into a medical college building not far from the runway. The crash killed all but one of the flight’s 242 passengers and crew. At least 50 people who were inside or around the college were injured, with five still missing. The flight’s sole survivor, British national Vishwashkumar Ramesh, who reportedly jumped from the plane’s emergency exit, told Hindustan Times he heard a “loud noise” about 30 seconds after takeoff. A medic who treated him told AP that Ramesh described the plane “splitting in two.”
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