I can never get on a plane, says teenager who became an important witness after recording Air India Flight Crash

FSL -Team is investigating a tail of Air India Ahmedabad – London Boeing 787 aircraft that crashed on Saturday, June 14, 2025 at Hostel Urbin Hoop in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. | Photocredit: Vijay Soneji

For the 17-year-old Parth (name changed), what started as an exciting first day on his father’s new accommodation, soon in a traumatic experience. Barely an hour after reaching Saraswati Nagar – a densely populated place just two kilometers from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport – the teenager became an ignorant eyewitness of one of India’s worst aircraft tramps in recent history.

Excited to see an airplane at such a narrow distance, Parth, a student of class 12, had brought out his phone to take on the view and to show his friends back in his native village. But within a few seconds his camera recorded the horrible moment when Air India Flight AI171, on the way to London, dropped from heaven and crashed into a fiery explosion. The episode has shocked him deeply. “I can never get on a plane,” he said.

The teenager, a resident of Shamlaji Taluk in the Araavalli district of Gujarat, arrived in Ahmedabad around 12 June. His father, who had retired, recently started working as a guard at the Ahmedabad Metro. Only a day before, on June 11, he had rented a room in a small building between the airport and the crash location.

“I had arrived at my father’s place around 12.30 and went to the terrace after I heard that planes often flew by. I was curious, so I started filming a video of a flying unusually low – it was closest to an airplane. In the beginning I was at the start of aviation. Media.

No one held: police

The video he recorded quickly went viral, allowing the Ahmedabad crime branch to record his statement on Saturday as a witness. Later the police released a brief clarification after the first reports suggested that the boy had been held. “He came with his father to issue a statement as a witness. He was then sent away with his father. No arrests or arrests were made,” the police said.

On Sunday morning, Kailashbhen Thakur, the Hospita of the House, told Parth’s gripping experience. “He had just arrived in the city for the first time. Within an hour he witnessed something that nobody should ever see,” she said. She added that the boy was deeply shocked by the experience and had decided to return to his village to resume his studies.

(The identity of the boy has been remembered because he is a minor)