Vishwash Ramesh was the only survivor from the Air India plane that crashed shortly after take off from Ahmedabad airport and he has given an insight into what may have caused the accident
A British man who was the only survivor of the Air India plane crash has given a clue as to what may have caused the horrific accident.
Vishwash Ramesh has told of watching people “dying in front of my eyes”. And speaking from his hospital bed he said “I still can’t believe how I survived”. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner struck a medical college as it crashed in a fireball on Thursday, killing the other 241 people on board, shortly after take off from Ahmedabad airport. It is one of the deadliest plane crashes in terms of the number of British nationals killed, and the first involving a 787.
Mr Ramesh was in seat 11A, next to one of the aircraft’s emergency exits. Addressing what happened before the incident, Mr Ramesh said: “When the flight took off, within five to 10 seconds it felt like it was stuck in the air.
“Suddenly, the lights started flickering – green and white. The aircraft wasn’t gaining altitude and was just gliding before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded.” The flickering lights suggest that there could have been an electrical problem and it comes after a passenger who travelled on the plane the previous day said that electrical parts including screens on the back of seats weren’t working.
India’s civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X that the black box of the plane was recovered within 28 hours from the crash site.
Information will now be gathered from the black box and one of the theories which has been put forward by aviation experts is that there was an electrical failure.
Mr Ramesh said: “I can’t believe how I came out of it alive. For a moment, I felt like I was going to die too. But when I opened my eyes and looked around, I realised I was alive. I still can’t believe how I survived.”
He told how he “saw an opening in the fuselage,” and continued: “I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out.” Commenting on his survival, Mr Ramesh said: “I don’t know how I survived. I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me … I walked out of the rubble.”
Aviation experts have also speculated about other possible causes of the crash, from both engines failing – possibly due to a bird strike, as happened in the so-called Miracle on the Hudson in 2009 – to the flaps on the aircraft’s wings not being set to the correct position for take-off. UK officials are being deployed to India to support the investigation, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said.
US transportation secretary Sean Duffy confirmed US teams from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board were also heading to India with support from Boeing and GE Aerospace. He told reporters it was “way too premature” to ground Boeing 787s in the aftermath of the crash.