Air India survivor explains how he just 'walked out' of plane before explosion
The London-bound Boeing 787 struck a medical college hostel when the plane came down shortly after takeoff in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad
The sole survivor of the Air India plane that crashed moments after takeoff has revealed how he survived the fiery wreck. The lone survivor was a passenger, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a British national of Indian origin.
Ramesh was thrown from the aircraft and walked to an ambulance, according to Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who treated Ramesh. The doctor said that Ramesh was disoriented, with multiple injuries, but that he seemed to be out of danger. Another medic said Ramesh told him that immediately after the plane took off, it began descending and suddenly split in two, throwing him out before a loud explosion. The airline said there were no other survivors among the 242 passengers and crew on board.
He is being treated at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, just a short distance from where the plane crashed. Speaking to local news company DD India, he admitted that he "can't explain," what happened.
Ramesh, who was sitting in 11A, forced his way out of the plane after the crash, past a broken door. He said: "The emergency door was broken, my seat is broken."
Asked how he escaped, he replied: "I am not jumping. I just walked out innit." He described his survival simply: "It's a miracle."
His doctor added: "He is having minor injuries only. He has some abrasions over his left forearm and swelling over left eyelid and over the eyes.
"Chest and abdomen is clear, no lung fractures present. The patient is vitally stable." He will be able to return to his family in the next 48 hours, his healthcare team predict.
Security camera footage showed the plane taking off and then veering slightly to the side. It then drops into a downward glide, disappears briefly from sight and hits the ground.
Moments later, a huge orange and black fireball appears, rising high into the air. At the crash site, the tail cone of the aircraft with damaged stabilizer fins still attached was lodged near the top of a building.
The plane's jagged cavity has torn into the facade. A web of cracks spirals outward from the plane's impact. The battered building in Ahmedabad was the dining area for medical students and they were having lunch when the plane crashed.
The airline had been plagued by tragedy and financial losses under prior state ownership. In 2010, an Air India flight arriving from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, overshot the runway in Mangalore, India, and plunged over a cliff, killing 158 of the 166 people on board. In 2020, a flight for the Air India Express subsidiary skidded off a runway in southern India during heavy rain and cracked in two — killing 18 people and injuring more than 120 others.
An Air India Boeing 747 flight crashed into the Arabian Sea in 1978, killing all 213 aboard. The carrier was under government control from 1953 through 2022.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Brit dad shares weird seat coincidence after cheating death on Air India flight
A British dad has shared his shock and expressed his gratitude for the last minute flight change that saved his life - he was due on the Air India flight 171 this week A British dad was originally due to fly home on the doomed Air India flight - but changed his plans at the very last minute and tells of the very bizarre coincidence with his new booking. Owen Jackson, 31, from Saffron Walden in Essex, had been in India on a work trip and was scheduled to fly back this week but had to decide between flying back on Thursday or Saturday. In the end his colleagues said to take the Saturday flight as the job would take a bit longer than originally planned. He was then booked onto the same route on Saturday which would have been the same aircraft as the one which crashed, killing all but one of the 242 people onboard. In a bizarre coincidence, Owen was booked onto seat 11A for the Saturday flight - the seat number belonging to the only survivor of flight 171. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft, which had been bound for London's Gatwick Airport, was carrying 242 passengers and crew members when it crashed minutes after taking off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. Right before losing signal, the aircraft sent a "mayday" message to colleagues on the ground, alerting them to an emergency situation. The Dreamliner crashed directly into a dining room at B J Medical College, in a residential area of Ahmedabad, western India, while medical students were sitting down for their lunch. However, in a turn of events deemed miraculous by some, passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh managed to escape the horror ordeal, surviving with "impact injuries" on his chest, eyes and feet. Owen told The Sun: 'It's a shock. I'm more grateful than anything else - it is such a weird coincidence. You hear it every now and again about planes going down and you don't really think much of it, but when it's the actual aircraft you're potentially getting on two days later, it does make you think. My main emotion on the whole thing is I'm quite grateful for the fact that I made that decision when I did.' When news first broke of the crash, Owen had not told his family back home which day he was due to fly back on. Wife Phillipa, 30, spent two hours unsure whether her husband had perished in the crash. Phillipa said: 'It was surreal. It was like being in a dream, but not actually just hoping to wake up, but pinching yourself over and over again and not waking up." Owen said: 'I hadn't checked my phone two hours after it happened, after the news broke. I probably was one of the last people to find out about it, funnily enough, because I was in meetings exactly when the news was breaking. Families who have lost loved ones in the Air India Flight 171 catastrophe will be offered £86,000, as pledged by Air India owners the Tata Group.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
New video of doomed Air India flight 'shows Boeing 787 did lose power' just before crash killed 242 passengers and ploughed into residential area
A new bombshell video provides evidence that the Air India Boeing 787 lost power after take off, leading to a catastrophic crash that killed 242 passengers, an aviation expert has claimed. Commercial airline pilot Steve Schreiber, who analyses plane crashes and close calls, said a new clearer video shows the doomed flight suffered a 'dual engine failure' before crashing in what was one of India's worst aviation disasters. The London-bound 787 Dreamliner began losing height moments after take-off and exploded into a fireball over a residential area in the Ahmedabad, Gujarat. All but one of the 242 passengers were killed in the horror crash along with another 38 who were killed on the ground when the plane smashed into residential buildings. Initially Mr Schreiber, known by his pseudonym Captain Steve online, suspected there had been an exceptionally simple error in the cockpit when the co-pilot was asked to retract the landing gear, with devastating consequences. However, a clearer video has emerged of the crash, with higher quality visuals and sound, which Mr Schreiber believes could prove that a dual engine failure led to the plane's terrifying final moments. He said a tiny detail which can be seen on the new video is a 'total gamechanger'. Mr Schreiber explained on his Youtube channel Captain Steeeve that beneath the right wing of the aeroplane, he could see a 'protrusion on the belly of the aircraft'. Underneath that there is a 'little grey dot', he added. He said this is evidence of the Ram Access Turbine (RAT) deploying on the plane. A protrusion on the belly of the aircraft, seen in a newly emerged video, has provided evidence about the plane's final moments 'Many aeroplanes have it,' he said. 'It is just behind the wing on the right side of the aeroplane, there is a little door that holds it in. 'It looks like a little Evinrude motor, it's a little two bladed prop. 'The purpose is to provide electrical and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft on an extreme emergency.' Mr Schreiber said that on a 787 there are three things that will deploy the RAT automatically. He said: 'A massive electrical failure, a massive hydraulic failure, or a dual engine failure. 'Any one of those three things will cause that RAT to deploy.' The aviation expert said that the protrusion and the grey dot were visual evidence of the RAT deploying on the aircraft. He added: 'That little grey dot is the RAT. The protrusion is the door that opened to allow the rat to come down.' Mr Schreiber then detailed the second piece of evidence - the sound of the video. He said: 'A RAT makes a distinctive sound, it sounds like a propeller aeroplane going by, or a real high-pitched squeal. It is basically spinning at the speed of sound to produce the energy, electrical and hydraulic that it needs to. 'If you weren't looking at it, it sounded like a single-engine prop aeroplane just flew by. 'The RAT was originally designed as the absolute last resort, assuming there is going to be a dual engine failure at altitude. 'It is not designed for an aeroplane at 400- 500ft. But it is evidence for us.' His theory is that the crash was caused by a dual-engine failure. He added: 'It is evidence for us it was dual engine failure, most likely. It could have been electrical issue, it could have been hydraulic issue, it could have been either one of that. 'But I think the fact the aeroplane is mushing out the sky gives the idea it was a dual engine failure.' Alongside visual and audio evidence provided by the new video, Mr Schreiber believes the eyewitness report taken from sole survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, provides the third clue to the plane's demise. The British national, 40, said that he was in India with his brother for the best part of a year and was returning to London, where his family live, on the Gatwick-bound aircraft on Thursday. He was seated in 11A on the doomed flight from Ahmedabad, which is said to be one of the worst in India's aviation history, having claimed the lives of 279 people so far. Among the victims believed to be dead, which includes 53 British nationals, is the 40-year-old's brother Ajay Kumar, 35, who was sat on the other side of the aisle in seat 11J perished in the fireball explosion. Describing what happened after take off in an interview from his hospital bed he 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.' It came after a passenger on the plane when it flew the day before the crash claimed that electronics on the jet such as the screens in the seats were not working. Mr Schreiber believes his short interview may hold another piece of evidence to explain the plane's demise. Wreckage of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner lies at the site where the Air India plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025 He explained: 'He said just prior to the crash, he heard a loud bang and the lights flickered on the inside of the aeroplane. 'We have got a guy saying he heard a loud bang and the lights flickered, what would cause that? The deployment of the RAT. 'It's going to take over electrical and hydraulic and as it does that the lights in the aeroplane would flicker. 'I have heard reports the captain got out a mayday call and he said they were losing thrust. 'That could be the fourth piece of evidence for dual engine failure.' The evidence that the crash could have been caused by dual-engine failure was ruled out by Aviation Herald - who reported on the crash from India. But Mr Schreiber said he thinks the publication 'probably got that wrong' based on the evidence he has seen. Although the evidence gives 'a lot more clarity' on the crash, he believes it also sends the investigation 'back to square one' because he has no idea why both engines on a 787 would flame out right after take off. The new video emerged as it was revealed to be the original footage of a clip that was shared around the world, which had in fact been a recording of a video on a person's phone. Mr Schreiber explained: 'The video that we all saw was a video of a video and the quality was extremely poor. The original is much sharper. What happened was some cameraman was standing in front of the screen watching the video play. You can see him at the end of it. The audio is not very good and the visual is not very good.' The clarity of the original video along with the original audio helped him come to his new conclusion on the cause of the crash. It comes as the pilot of the India Air plane has been hailed a hero by locals after it emerged that he diverted the jet a the last second to avoid an apartment block, saving the lives of 18 families. The families are convinced they owe their lives to Captain Semeet Sabharwal - who diverted the plane which was heading towards them when it began to rapidly descent after take off, The Sun reported. Captain Sabharwal managed to divert the plane towards a patch of grassland instead. Locals in Ahmedabad fled their homes when the plane erupted into a fireball next to a medical college. The top two floors of a disused four-storey military building were destroyed by the crash. A fire then tore through the college's hostel and killed dozens of students and staff who were eating in the canteen. Captain Sabharwal, 55, was an experienced pilot with more than 8,200 hours of flying time and the son of an officer with India's civil aviation authority. He was the main carer for his father, now in his 80s and called him before taking off. The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) announced on Friday night that four of its investigators had arrived in India and have expertise in aircraft operations, engineering and recorded data. The 'release of information on the investigation rests solely with the Indian authorities', it added. Air India said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian on board the flight, as well as 12 crew members. MailOnline previously revealed the British victims were Akeel Nanawaba, Hannaa Vorajee and their daughter Sarah, 4, Fiongal and Jamie Greenlaw-Meek, Javed Ali Syed, his wife and two children, Raxa Modha, her grandson Rudra and her daughter-in-law Yasha Kamdar, and Ajay Kumar Ramesh, the brother of the tragedy's only survivor.
Daily Record
6 hours ago
- Daily Record
Heartbreak as first funeral held for Brit mum who died in Air India crash
Mum-of-two Elcina Alpesh Makwana, 41, who lived in Hounslow, London, has become the first British victim of the Air India plane crash to be laid to rest. The first funeral has been held for a British mum who tragically died in the Air India crash as the grieving family gathered to lay her to rest just hours after her remains were returned. Mum-of-two Elcina Alpesh Makwana, 41, was among the 270 people killed when flight AI171 to Gatwick came down in flames shortly after take off from Ahmedabad airport in India last Thursday. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner smashed into a residential, with most of the victims so badly burned they could only be identified through DNA, reports the Mirror. An investigation has now been launched to determine the cause of the crash while the bodies are being identified and returned to their families. Elcina had been visiting her parents in India and having dental treatment when she boarded the doomed flight. She was identified through DNA testing and just hours later taken to Pensionpora Cemetery Vadodara in Gujarat on Sunday morning for her funeral. Her husband 52, and her two children, aged seven and 11, had flown to India for the Catholic service. And her uncle Joseph Patelia told the Mail how she was a "gentle soul'. He said: "Before take-off, she called her father to say she'd boarded safely and would call again once she landed. That call never came. She vanished just like that leaving us in shock, in tears, unable to believe what we were hearing. It's been a nightmare for the family.' Mr Patelia also told how she regularly travelled to India and supported poor children in the country by pating for their education. He said: "She had struggled a lot in life, moving to London over 15 years ago, taking on part-time jobs to support her family there and her parents here in India. She had no brothers, so she took on every responsibility herself. Her loss is devastating. She was the bond that held our entire family together." A multi-faith vigil was held outside the Indian High Commission in Holborn, London on Sunday, where around 150 people - some travelling from as far as Leicester and Bradford - lit candles around the statue of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Photos of the victims, tealights and flowers formed a makeshift memorial at the scene. Nilesh Solanki, 50, from the City Hindus Network and Action for Harmony, told those gathered: 'When so many lives are lost in an instant, it's hard to comprehend – and we ask the question why. Families, hopes, friends, people – vanished. 'Without even knowing the individuals, we felt the pain of these families. Coming together in this way is really important – it's a lesson for all of us to reflect.' Organiser Pranav Bhanot, 36, a lawyer from London, said: 'We felt so helpless hearing about the crash. We wanted to do something about it. An air crash is always going to be quite devastating. We're only a small island nation – we had friends, parents on that flight. We wanted to do something special to remember and recognise them.' The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a residential area in Ahmedabad shortly after take-off on Thursday. Most of the victims were severely burned, making identification difficult.
