Sole India plane crash survivor mourns his brother during funeral
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the Air India crash, helped carry his brother's flower-heaped coffin to a crematorium in the western Indian coastal town of Diu, days after they plummeted into the ground shortly after takeoff. All 241 other passengers and crew onboard the flight died, as did at least 30 people on the ground, including five medical students
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Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
How often do plane crashes have sole survivors?
Sole survivors A 40-year-old British man, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, was the sole survivor of the crash of an Air India jet shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad en route to Gatwick. A surprising number of aircraft disasters have had a sole survivor – at least five others where more than 100 were killed. — On 16 August 1987 a four-year-old girl, Cecilia Cichan, survived the crash of North West Airlines flight 255 shortly after takeoff from Detroit; it killed 156. The plane's wing flaps had not been extended (a suggested cause of the Air India disaster). — On 6 March 2003, a 28-year-old soldier, Youcef Djillali, survived the crash of Air Algerie flight 6289 shortly after takeoff from Tamanrasset; 102 died. — On 8 July 2003 two-year-old Mohammed el Fateh survived the crash of Sudan Airways flight 139, after the Boeing 737 crash-landed while returning to Port Sudan after an engine failure. — On 30 June 2009, 12-year-old Bahia Bakari was the only one of 152 passengers and crew to survive the plunge of Yemenia flight 626 in the Indian Ocean – she was found clinging to wreckage hours later. — On 12 May 2010, nine-year-old Ruben van Assouw survived the crash of Afriqiyah Airways flight 771 on approach to Tripoli – the only one of 103 passengers and crew. Cheat sheet How much benefit fraud and error is there – officially? In 2024/25 £9.5bn (3.3% of the overall benefits bill) was lost to fraud. This was down on the £9.7bn (3.6%) lost in 2023/24. Losses peaked at 4% in 2021/22. However, in the 13 years to 2019 losses never exceeded 2.2%. In 2024/25, £6.5bn (2.2%) was put down to fraud, £1.9bn (0.7%) to claimant error and £1bn (0.4%) down to official error. What a blast If Iran were to succeed in gaining a nuclear weapon, it would become the 10th country currently known to possess one. The others are the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel (although the latter does not acknowledge its possession of nuclear weapons). — Three other modern-day countries once had nuclear weapons stationed on their soil: Ukraine, Kazakhstan and South Africa. — South Africa is the only country which once possessed nuclear weapons in its own right and voluntarily relinquished them (the other two gained nuclear status as part of the Soviet Union). Its decision to abandon nuclear weapons in the late 1980s means there are currently no land-based nukes in the southern hemisphere.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Air India crash survivor consumed by guilt over brother's death
The sole survivor of the Air India crash has spoken of how he is struggling to come to terms with his feelings of guilt after he missed the opportunity to move his brother into the plane seat next to him. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old businessman from Leicester, was returning to London on flight AI171 last week when it crashed into a medical college building shortly after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport in the western state of Gujarat. His brother, Ajay, was one of the 241 people on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane who died in the disaster. Fifty-two British citizens were among those killed. Ramesh miraculously survived with relatively minor injuries after jumping out of an emergency exit next to his seat 11A. Speaking for the first time since the crash, Ramesh told The Sun: 'I tried to get two seats together but someone had already got one. Me and Ajay would have been sitting together. But I lost my brother in front of my eyes. So now I am constantly thinking 'Why can't I save my brother?'' Ramesh added: 'It's a miracle I survived. I am okay physically but I feel terrible that I could not save Ajay.' Overcome with emotion after the crash, he told friends: 'I wish I was not alive.' On Tuesday, Ramesh broke down in tears as he helped tocarry his brother's coffin only hours after he had been discharged from hospital. Recalling the final frantic moments on board the plane, Ramesh said: 'Everything happened in seconds. I realised we were going down.' The aircraft, Ramesh added, 'wasn't gaining altitude and was just gliding. After that, the plane seemed to speed up, before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded. Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened. 'I too thought that I was about to die, but then I opened my eyes and realised that I was still alive.' Ramesh told the Hindustan Times that when the plane crashed, the section he was sitting in landed on the ground rather than hitting the roof of a building. Locals spotted Ramesh as he staggered out of the grounds of a medical college and they led him to an ambulance before he attempted to go back into the inferno searching for his brother. While in the hospital, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, visited Ramesh. The process of identifying victims through DNA and dental records is ongoing, with 202 victims identified to date. Air India said in a statement that it was working to repatriate the deceased to the UK and other parts of the world. Air accident investigators from the United States and the UK have been sent to take part in the crash investigation. The black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, have been recovered. An inspection of Air India's 787 fleet did not reveal any major issues and India's aviation safety watchdog has asked the airline for the training records of the pilots and the dispatchers.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
It is a miracle, says lone survivor of Air India plane crash
The British survivor of the Air India plane crash has said it is a 'miracle' he survived but added he feels 'terrible' he could not save his brother. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh told The Sun: 'It's a miracle I survived. I am OK physically but I feel terrible that I could not save Ajay.' The Air India aircraft struck a medical college hostel in a residential part of Ahmedabad last week, killing 241 of the 242 people on board, 52 of whom were British. The sole surviving passenger was Mr Ramesh. The 40-year-old told The Sun he tried to get seats together with his brother but was not able to. He said: 'If we had been sat together we both might have survived. 'I tried to get two seats together but someone had already got one. Me and Ajay would have been sitting together. 'But I lost my brother in front of my eyes. So now I am constantly thinking 'Why can't I save my brother?' Mr Ramesh was in seat 11A, next to one of the aircraft's emergency exits. Last week's crash was one of the deadliest plane accidents in terms of the number of British nationals killed. Investigators are yet to determine the cause of the crash. On Tuesday, an Air India flight on the same route as the plane that crashed last week was cancelled because of 'precautionary checks', the airline said. Air India's website shows the Flight AI159 was initially delayed by one hour and 50 minutes but was later cancelled. A flight from Gatwick to Amritsar, India, was also axed. The cancelled flights were scheduled to be operated by a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which is the same type of aircraft that crashed shortly after take-off at Ahmedabad on June 12.
