The sole survivor of the Air India plane crash that killed more than 240 people spoke out on Friday, saying he couldn’t believe he was alive as he recounted seeing others dying near him while he escaped through a broken emergency exit.
The airline confirmed in a statement on X that there was a “sole survivor” from the crash that took place on Thursday just after takeoff from Ahmedabad in India, headed for London’s Gatwick airport.
Viswash Kumar Ramesh, the survivor, was in seat 11A near the emergency exit, and he said he managed to squeeze through the broken hatch. He was filmed on Thursday limping on the street in a blood-stained shirt with bruises on his face.
Ramesh, a British national of Indian origin, told Indian state broadcaster DD News that he doesn’t “believe how I survived” while speaking with the outlet from his hospital bed on Friday.
“For some time I thought I was also going to die,” Ramesh, 40, said. “But when I opened my eyes, I realized I was alive and I tried to unbuckle myself from the seat and escape from where I could.
“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.”
“When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran,” he told Hindustan Times.
“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,” Ramesh said. “The opposite side of the aircraft was blocked by the building wall so nobody could have come out of there.”
He recalled the moments before the crash, saying that when the flight took off, “within 5 to 10 seconds it felt like it was stuck in the air.”
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“Suddenly, the lights started flickering — green and white — then the plane rammed into some establishment that was there,” he said.
Ramesh suffered burns and bruises and has been kept under observation at the hospital, an official at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad said.
“He was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body,” Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who treated Ramesh, told The Associated Press. “But he seems to be out of danger.”
An official added that “his escape … and without any grievous injury, was nothing short of a miracle. He also realizes that and is a bit shaken by the trauma of it too.”
Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah meeting British plane crash survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, at a hospital in Ahmedabad after Air India confirmed he was the sole survivor of the 242 people on board the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Ministry of Home Affairs India via AP
Ramesh said he was travelling with his brother Ajay, who was seated in a different row. They were visiting family in India and returning to the U.K. when the crash happened.
He called relatives in Leicester after the crash, his cousin, Ajay Valgi, told the BBC. He has a wife and “little boy” at home.
“He only said that he’s fine, nothing else,” Valgi said, adding that the family is “happy that he’s OK, but we’re still upset about the other brother.”
Another brother of Ramesh, Nayan Kumar Ramesh, told Sky News that Viswash called his father moments after the crash to say he had survived.
“He video-called my dad as he crashed and said, ‘Oh the plane’s crashed. I don’t know where my brother is. I don’t see any other passengers. I don’t know how I’m alive, how I exited the plane,’” he told the outlet.
Nayan said he was supposed to be picking his brothers up from Gatwick Airport on Thursday and the whole family planned to get together for a gathering this weekend.
“I’ve got no words to describe it,” he said. “It’s a miracle that he survived — but what about the other miracle for my other brother?”
He said that his family is “devastated,” adding, “I’m scared to fly now — to even sit on a plane.”
After the crash, Air India shared a post on X, confirming “the passengers comprised 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, 7 Portuguese nationals and 1 Canadian national.”
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson shared his “deep sorrow about this event” in a video posted to X after the crash.
“We are actively working with the authorities on all of the emergency response efforts,” Wilson said. “A special team of caregivers from Air India is on the way to Ahmedabad to provide additional support.”
Police said some people at the dormitory of a nearby medical school and others on the ground were also killed in the plane crashed into the building. Rescue workers were searching for missing people and aircraft parts in the charred buildings of the hostel on Friday to help find the cause of the crash.
Air India has said the investigation will take time. Planemaker Boeing has said a team of experts is ready to go to India to help in the probe.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived in his home state of Gujarat to visit the crash site, met Ramesh in hospital on Friday.
The cause of the crash, the first for a Boeing Dreamliner wide-body airliner, has not yet been determined and India’s aviation minister said a formal investigation had begun. Air India has not commented on what caused the crash.
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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