Who is the sole survivor of Indian airline crash that killed 241
An Air India commercial jet carrying more than 200 passengers en route to London crashed minutes after taking off Thursday morning from the Indian state of Gujarat.
The Boeing 787-7 aircraft had 242 passengers and crew members on board. Air India said later that 69 were Indian nationals, 53 were British nationals, seven were Portuguese and one Canadian national was on board.
All but one abroad were killed in the crash that took place in the residential area of Ahmedabad, the largest city of Gujarat.
The one passenger who survived was Vishwashkumar Ramesh.
Ramesh was filmed walking away from the wreckage. He is a British national of Indian origin.
'Thirty seconds after takeoff there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,' Ramesh said to the Hindustan Times on Thursday.
Ramesh was visiting family in India for a few days and was returning to the United Kingdom, where he has lived for two decades.
'When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital,' Ramesh told The Hindustan Times.
Ramesh's brother Nayan Kumar said that their father spoke to Vishwashkumar moments before the plane, bound for England's London Gatwick Airport, took off.
'My dad called him. And Vishwash said, 'Oh, we're going to take off soon,' Nayan said in a Thursday interview with Sky News.
'He video called my dad as he crashed and said, 'Oh the plane's crashed. I don't know where my brother is. I don't see any other passengers. I don't know how I'm alive – how I exited the plane',' Nayan told the news channel.
Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who is treating Ramesh at Ahmedabad's Civil Hospital, told The Associated Press that Ramesh was 'disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body.'
'But he seems to be out of danger,' the doctor told the AP.
Ahmedabad police commissioner GS Malik told Indian news outlet Asian News International that Ramesh was seated in seat 11A in the emergency row.
The former Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector David Soucie told CNN that the 11A seat is 'right where the spar of the wing would go under and it would be a solid place for the aircraft to hit the ground, but as far as survivability above it, that is incredibly surprising.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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