The accident occurred when the plane, a Boeing 737, overshot the runway of the airport serving the city of Mangalore in Karnataka state.
“All are dead. There is no doubt about it,” Mangalore deputy police commissioner R. Ramesh told AFP by telephone from the crash site.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, although Ramesh said the airport had been lashed by heavy rains which had hampered rescue efforts.
Television footage suggested the plane had partially broken up, with smoke billowing from the main fuselage, as rescue workers sought to douse the fire with foam.
The plane was carrying 163 passengers and nine crew members. Officials had said earlier 169 people were on the plane.
Mangalore is a coastal city, around 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Bangalore.
It was the first major plane crash in India in nearly a decade.
Sixty-one people were killed when a Boeing 737 aircraft belonging to the domestic airline, Alliance Air, crashed into a residential area near the airport in the eastern Indian city of Patna in July 2000.
Source: Al Arabiya