Ahmedabad: Khushboo had only just slipped the traditional silver bangles onto her wrists, and now-bejewelled and expectant-she left Rajasthan, eager to share the UK skies with her husband Vipul. Air India Flight AI-171 lifted from the long, sun-kissed runway at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International; a few angry minutes later, it finished its arc over Meghani Nagar with a crash that shook the neighbourhood awake.
The Boeing 787 carried 230 passengers and a close-knit crew of twelve, every one of them hundreds of miles from home that Thursday afternoon in June 2025. Engineers prepping the aircraft had filled the wings with nearly 125,000 litres of kerosene, a cocktail that exploded upon impact with BJ Medical Colleges doctors hostel, melting metal before anyone could crouch beside a door.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah later told reporters the fire had exceeded the limit of ordinary heroism, while the count remained bleak-242 souls lost to smoke and wreckage. Only a single passenger, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, emerged from the inferno alive, his survival becoming a statistic as cold as the flames had been hot.
Khushboos passing transforms the disaster from statistics into something achingly personal. The passenger list held 169 Indian citizens, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian, and Khushboo was one of the Indians. A mayday alert reportedly punctuated the final seconds of flight, and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is now chasing that fragment for answers.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah inspected the wreck and later warned that 1.25 lakh litres of jet fuel had ignited, leaving no window for survival. As the toll mounted, the Tata Group promised every bereaved family, including Khushboos, an ex-gratia payment of Rs 1 crore and committed to settling medical bills for those who were hurt.
Among the deceased were former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and three MBBS students who had been resting in their hostel; the Indian Medical Association Gujarat listed 45 additional injuries. Air India quickly set up a helpline-1800 5691 444-and organized extra flights from Delhi and Mumbai so kin could reach the scene. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the loss as heartbreaking beyond words on social media.
Ground teams from the Indian Army, the NDRF, and local fire brigades are still sifting through the wreckage, but the lingering heat and shattered debris are ghastly obstacles. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, along with Boeing, has signaled its readiness to assist the AAIB in piecing together what went wrong.
Shortly before she married, Khushboo buried a sister in Gujarat and walked to the funeral barefoot. That staggering loss-lifes first farewell-still shadows her as she and her husband begin this fresh chapter. It also reminds the nation of the crushing personal cost of the recent Ahmedabad air crash, and of why investigators now work round the clock to keep such calamities from repeating themselves.