Plane Crashes in India, Killing Dozens

An Alliance Air jetliner carrying 58 people caught fire and crashed just before a scheduled landing this morning at Patna airport in eastern India, airport officials said.

Twenty bodies, burned beyond recognition, were pulled from the wreckage about 3 1/2 hours after the Boeing 737 crashed into a government housing colony southwest of the airport.

The airplane, with flames spewing, dipped just before it crashed on a house, said witness Ashok Kesri. “The plane was on fire before it hit the house,” Kesri said.

Six people survived when they were thrown from the plane as it exploded on impact, said Baljit Singh, inspector-general of police. Three of the injured were hospitalized in critical condition.

Relatives, police and airport workers mobbed the smoldering pile of metal wreckage, screaming and crying as they tried to find survivors.

Witnesses said five members of a family of seven died when the plane crashed on their house a third of a mile southwest of Patna airport.

Airport station manager H. H. Khan said 58 people were on the flight by Alliance Air, a subsidiary of state-owned Indian Airlines that makes domestic flights.

Some men grabbed a water hose and tried to help soldiers and police put out the flames. More than 20 fire engines surrounded the rubble and fought the fire about three hours after the crash.

The Alliance Air flight left Calcutta for New Delhi, with a scheduled stop at 7:15 a.m. in Patna, the capital of Bihar, India’s poorest state, before a second stop in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state.