Patna: Fifty-one passengers were killed when an Alliance Air Boeing 737 crashed and burst into flames while approaching Patna airport, in the east Indian state of Bihar, On Monday morning. Seven people on board the aircraft had a miraculous escape.

Fifty-two passengers and six crewmembers were on board flight CD-7412 of Alliance Air -- a subsidiary of the state-owned Indian Airlines -- which took off from Calcutta and was en route to New Delhi via Patna and Lucknow.

The plane crashed in the Gardanibag locality, about half-a-kilometer away from Patna airport, at around 7.35 a.m., smashing into a houses occupied by junior government employees, witnesses said. The crash occurred just 10 minutes before the aircraft's scheduled arrival at Patna.

Four people were also feared killed on the ground, officials said, adding there was a possibility more bodies could be trapped under the debris. Rescue workers were sifting through the wreckage of the plane and the houses even 10 hours after the crash.

Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav, who flew to Patna for a spot assessment, announced a judicial inquiry and immediate compensation of Rs 750,000 ($1,7045 at Rs 44 to a dollar) to families of each of the dead.

He said the cause of the crash could be determined only after the investigation was over. Eyewitnesses said one of the engines of the plane caught fire and there was also an explosion before the plane crashed.

The crash sparked a major blaze. Six fire tenders were pressed into service to extinguish the fire.

"According to information available to us, seven survivors were found and have been shifted to the hospitals for treatment," S.L. Gera, a spokesman for Indian Airlines, told IANS in New Delhi.

Officials said 51 bodies, most of them badly charred, were recovered. The survivors were identified as P. Bopanna, K. Rajgarhia, Prachi Rajgarhia, K. Rajgarhia, R. Ranjan, B. Rungta and Rajiv Singh Rana.

Four of them were undergoing treatment in Patna Medical College Hospital. Three were admitted in a private nursing home. All seven were under intensive care.

Rungta told reporters he had been asleep when the plane crashed. "I could not see how it all happened," he told reporters. An Alliance Air plane was also involved in a crash in 1998 in which six persons died while it was taking off from Cochin airport, an official said.