British dad booked on Air India plane crash survivor's seat 11A speaks out on tragedy
Owen Jackson was due to fly back on Thursday but his plans were changed.
A dad who was due to travel back to the United Kingdom on the doomed Air India flight has told how a last minute change of plans saved his life.
Owen Jackson changed his plans at the last minute, before the jet went down in a fireball crash which killed 241 of the 242 people on board the aircraft.
The only survivor was Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who was sitting in seat 11A. And when Owen was booked onto the Saturday flight to return home, he was given the same seat.
He had been in India on a work trip and were deciding whether to fly back on Thursday or Saturday. In the end his colleagues said to take the Saturday flight.
They delayed their return as the job would take a bit longer than originally planned. Thursday's Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft had been bound for London's Gatwick Airport.
It was carrying 242 passengers and crew members when it crashed minutes after taking off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport.
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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.
The 31-year-old, from Saffron Walden in Essex, 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.
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BBC News
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Air India: How the Boeing Dreamliner crash investigation is unfolding
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Also, he believed that the refuelling equipment used before departure "has likely been quarantined and already inspected".That's not all. Investigators will gather maintenance and fault history records from the airline and Boeing's ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting system) which transmits data via radio or satellite to both Boeing and Air India, says Mr will review all flights operated by the aircraft and the crew over recent months, along with the technical log of pilot-reported faults and corrective actions taken before release of aircraft to will also examine pilot licenses, training records, simulator performance and instructor remarks - including how pilots handled scenarios like engine failures in advanced flight simulators. 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