The sole British survivor of the horrific Air India plane crash has spoken out on the terrifying final moments before the passenger jet plunged into a nearby building
The man who defeated all odds to become the sole survivor of the horror Air India plane crash has revealed how he knew something was wrong on-board.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old Brit who lives in London, somehow managed to walk off the Gatwick-bound plane with minimal injuries after a miracle escape.
The horrific crash saw the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft plunge into college building in Ahmedabad, northwest India, killing all but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board. It’s the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
But in an incredible twist of fate, Vishwash is the only survivor who can reveal what exactly happened on the flight. He has given a terrifying account of what he saw, including the horror ordeal of watching air hostesses lose their lives.
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Vishwash also explained how just moments after take off, it ‘felt like the plane had got stuck’ – a haunting sign of what was to come. He explained that the brave pilots tried to raise the plane but it ‘went full speed and crashed into the building’.
Speaking to Indian broadcaster Doordarshan, he recalled witnessing two air hostesses die ‘in front of my eyes’. Vishwash admitted from his hospital bed: “I don’t know how I came out of it alive”.
“For a while, I thought I was about to die. But when I opened my eyes, I saw I was alive. And I opened my seatbelt and got out of there.”.
When the plane crashed yesterday, seat 11A – where Vishwash – sat collapsed into the ground floor of the building instead of the higher levels where the aircraft’s main body was obliterated.
He explained that he managed to exit the plane through a broken emergency door. “The side of the plane I was in landed on the ground, and I could see that there was space outside the aircraft, so when my door broke, I tried to escape through it and I did.”
“The opposite side of the aircraft was blocked by the building wall, so nobody could have come out of there.”
The Londoner was travelling with his 45-year-old brother Ajay Kumar Ramesh on the flight, who is feared dead. He is thought to have been sat on a different row to Vishwash.
Seat maps of the aircraft show that Ramesh’s seat, 11A, was positioned close to the front of the plane. He was also next to a window – all of which makes his survival statistically unlikely.
CNN safety analyst and former US Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector David Soucie had advised that Vishwash’s survival is “incredibly surprising”.
He told CNN how the seat was positioned, “right where the spar of the wing would go under, and it would be a solid place for the aircraft to hit the ground, but as far as survivability above it, that is incredibly surprising.”
Data from the National Transportation Safety Board in the US, which came from analysis of 20 plane crashes, found that passengers sitting at the back of the plane had the best chance of survival – a 69% chance of staying alive compared to 59% for those at the front.
Another study, by Time, analysed crash data and also found that the back of the plane seemed to be the safest place to sit. It also found that passengers sitting in the middle seat tended to have a higher chance of survival, Forbes reported.