AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — The Air India plane crash this week was one of India’s worst aviation disasters, killing 241 people on board and several people on the ground.
Indian authorities said Friday the investigation into the crash was underway and is expected to include experts from the plane's maker Boeing and U.S. aviation regulators.
The Air India plane crashed minutes after takeoff Thursday afternoon in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad. Surreal images captured both the plane's last moments and the horror of the crash site, with rescuers picking through smoking debris as they searched for survivors.
Here's what is known about the crash:
The lone survivor was a passenger, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a British national of Indian origin.
Ramesh was thrown from the aircraft and walked to an ambulance, according to Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who treated Ramesh. The doctor told The Associated Press that Ramesh was disoriented, with multiple injuries, but that he seemed to be out of danger.
Another medic said Ramesh told him that immediately after the plane took off, it began descending and suddenly split in two, throwing him out before a loud explosion.
The airline said there were no other survivors among the 242 passengers and crew on board.
Security camera footage verified by The Associated Press showed the plane taking off and then veering slightly to the side. It then drops into a downward glide, disappears briefly from sight and hits the ground.
Moments later, a huge orange and black fireball appears, rising high into the air.
At the crash site, the tail cone of the aircraft with damaged stabilizer fins still attached was lodged near the top of a building. The plane's jagged cavity has torn into the facade. A web of cracks spirals outward from the plane's impact.
The battered building in Ahmedabad was the dining area for medical students and they were having lunch when the plane crashed.
Indrajeet Singh Solanki, a witness and rescuer, said that at first it was chaotic, with smoke everywhere.
"We could see some small parts (of the plane) burning. Just like this wing lying over here,” he said. “Through the smoke, we kept rescuing injured people and rushed them to the trauma center in the civil hospital in auto rickshaws. We rushed nine people to the hospital.”
The airline had been plagued by tragedy and financial losses under prior state ownership.
In 2010, an Air India flight arriving from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, overshot the runway in Mangalore, India, and plunged over a cliff, killing 158 of the 166 people on board. In 2020, a flight for the Air India Express subsidiary skidded off a runway in southern India during heavy rain and cracked in two — killing 18 people and injuring more than 120 others.
An Air India Boeing 747 flight crashed into the Arabian Sea in 1978, killing all 213 aboard.
The carrier was under government control from 1953 through 2022.
The Boeing 787 went into service in 2009. This was the first crash of the model, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
The 787 Dreamliner was the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium ion batteries, which are lighter, recharge faster and can hold more energy than other types of batteries. In 2013 the 787 fleet was temporarily grounded because of overheating of its lithium-ion batteries, which in some cases sparked fires.
There was no information yet about possible causes of the crash. Authorities were searching the crash site Friday as part of the investigation, and there was no word whether the plane's black boxes — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — had been recovered.
Crash investigators are likely looking at whether the plane was configured correctly for takeoff, whether the engines lost power during takeoff and whether the crew inputted information correctly about the hot temperature outside as well as the weight of the fuel and passengers. Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti said a mistake in the data the crew put into the plane’s system could result in the flaps and slats being set incorrectly.
“We can see what we see on video and all of these potential issues we’re talking about: fuel, engine thrust, settings for the flaps and slats. That’s all going to be recorded on the flight data recorder,” said Guzzetti, who is a former crash investigator for both the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration. “And the cockpit voice recorder will hopefully have the discussion between the crew on what kind of performance numbers are being put into the computer."
Of course it's still too early to know what caused the crash, but the flight data recorder that investigators have already recovered should quickly provide some answers. Another aviation consultant, John M. Cox, said the video of the last moments of the flight raises questions about whether the flaps and slats were set correctly.
“The image shows the airplane with the nose rising and it continuing to sink,’’ he said. “That says that the airplane is not making enough lift.’’
The slats and flaps should be positioned so that the wing makes more lift at lower speeds, said Cox, who is the CEO of Washington DC-based Safety Operating Systems.
“It’s hard to tell but from looking at the aircraft from behind … it doesn’t look like that the trailing edge flaps are in the position I would have expected them to be,’’ he said. “But I’m very cautious that the image quality is not good enough to make that a conclusion. It’s just an area where I know that they’re going to look.’’
Klug reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha, Nebraska.
Firefighters work at the site of an airplane that crashed in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, Thursday, June 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
Kalpesh Bhai, whose 14-year-old brother was killed when an Air India plane crashed into a neighborhood, wails outside the autopsy room at a hospital in Ahmedabad, India, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
