A student is alive after missing doomed Air India flight by 10 minutes due to traffic
Bhoomi Chauhan was supposed to board an Air India flight that crashed shortly after take-off, but missed it by 10 minutes after she was delayed due to traffic, BBC reports.
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The 28-year-old was reportedly flying home to London, U.K., but was turned away by the airline staff for arriving less than an hour before departure. A business administration student, Chauhan lives in Bristol with her husband.
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'We got very angry with our driver and left the airport in frustration,' she told BBC. 'We left the airport and stood at a place to drink tea and after a while, before leaving … we were talking to the travel agent about how to get a refund for the ticket. There, I got a call that the plane had gone down.'
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A dentist from Mississauga, Ont., wasn't so lucky. Nirali Sureshkumar Patel was on board the Air India plane that crashed on Thursday. 'That was my wife,' the husband told The Canadian Press. 'I am not in a state to speak right now.' The husband and their one-year-old child are reportedly in the process of travelling to India.
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Sureshkumar Patel was employed at The Heritage Dental Care and, according to her bio, chose dentistry as a profession because 'the feeling that my work has made a difference in someone's life brightens my day!' Described as a generous spirit, Sureshkumar Patel would 'once per year … offer free treatments to her patients' and often volunteered at a free dental camp.
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Only one person walked away from the crash alive. 'Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,' British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, told Hindustan Times from a hospital bed on Thursday. He was reportedly travelling with his brother, who is presumed to be dead.
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The plane was carrying more than 242 passengers, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals, the airline said in a statement. The plane crashed five minutes after take-off in a residential area in Ahmedabad, a city in India with a population estimated to be over five million people. It was bound for London Gatwick Airport.
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The tragedy 'is heartbreaking beyond words,' India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X Thursday. 'In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it. Have been in touch with Ministers and authorities who are working to assist those affected.'
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