Seat 11A: 2 Plane Crashes, 2 Survivors, 27 Years Apart
New Delhi:
Two plane crash survivors, nearly three decades apart, shared the same seat: 11A. The first crash happened in Thailand in 1998, the other in India in 2025, and both survivors walked away from near-certain death.
James Ruangsak Loychusak, an actor and singer from Thailand, was shocked to discover that the only person who survived the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad was also sitting in seat 11A, the same seat he sat in when he defied death 27 years ago.
Mr Loychusak, 47, was on Thai Airways flight TG261 in 1998 when it crashed while attempting a landing in Surat Thani, a city in southern Thailand. The flight took off from Bangkok, but during landing, it stalled mid-air and crashed, killing 101 of the 146 people on board. He was one of the survivors and was seated in 11A, reported The Telegraph.
When the actor heard about the sole Air India flight AI-171 crash survivor - a 40-year-old British Indian man, Viswash Kumar Ramesh, who also happened to be seated in 11A, he noticed the strange coincidence.
"Survivor of a plane crash in India. He sat in the same seat as me. 11A," he wrote on Facebook.
But this was just a coincidence, for there were multiple survivors in the Thai Airways crash. In contrast, the Air India crash had only one survivor.
Additionally, the two aircraft were different. Thai Airways Flight was an Airbus A310, while Air India Flight AI-171 used a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. The design, layout, and seat positioning of 11A are different on the two aircraft.
The London-bound Air India flight took off from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on June 12 and crashed 30 seconds later on the hostel building of a nearby medical college. Of the 242 people on board, Viswash was the only survivor.
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