How did passenger survive Air India plane crash?
The British survivor of the Air India plane crash has described how he 'crawled out' of the wreckage.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, is believed to be the only survivor onboard the plane involved in Thursday's disaster in Ahmedabad.
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The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner was carrying 242 people when it crashed into a medical college shortly after take-off.
Mr Ramesh was in seat 11A, next to one of the aircraft's emergency exits.
Footage posted on social media shows him being interviewed by Indian television news channel DD News while lying in a hospital bed.
Another news channel, India TV, reported that he said: 'The aircraft wasn't gaining altitude and was just gliding before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded.
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'Everything happened in seconds. I realised we were going down.'
He went on: 'At first, I thought I was dead.
'Later, I realised I was still alive and saw an opening in the fuselage.
'I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out.
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'Everyone around me was either dead or dying. I still don't understand how I escaped.'
Indian newspaper the Hindustan Times report that he said: 'I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me.'
He also described how it felt like the plane was 'stuck in the air' within five to 10 seconds of taking off, and 'suddenly the lights started flickering green and white'.
Professor Graham Braithwaite, director of aerospace and aviation at Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, said Mr Ramesh's survival was 'a lovely surprise in a really, really tragic event'.
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(PA Graphics)
He told the PA news agency: 'The aircraft was loaded with fuel and it crashed into a heavily populated area.
'I can only imagine that he was thrown from the wreckage, and that somehow as it crashed, what it hit managed to absorb some of the impact'.
He went on: 'Looking at the scene, I would imagine that the disruption to the aircraft would have been huge.
'If anybody could have got out, then they probably could have just gone out in a gap in the fuselage.
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'You'd struggle to infer from this, therefore, that is the seat you must always sit in.
'At the point that an aircraft like that hits a building and catches fire, there's probably not too much you can do in that situation beyond being lucky about where you're sat.'
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The Independent
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BBC News
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Tributes paid in Leicester for couple killed in Air India crash
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Reuters
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'In shock': British Indians mourn crash victims at London vigil
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