a day ago
Miracle of Seat 11A: How did a passenger survive the Air India crash?
IT'S BEEN DESCRIBED as the 'Miracle of Seat 11A' and the passenger in question is at a loss to explain it.
British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was the only survivor of 242 people aboard a London-bound passenger plane that crashed in the Indian city of Ahmedabad yesterday.
He was sitting in seat 11A, which is next to one of the aircraft's emergency exits.
His brother, who was sitting on the other side of the aisle in seat 11J, was among those killed in the explosion.
Ramesh told India TV that he thought he was dead but realised he was alive when saw an opening in the fuselage that he managed to push through.
However, a professor in aerospace and aviation said it would be a 'struggle' to infer that seat 11A is in someway safer than other seats after Ramesh's unlikely survival.
Graham Braithwaite, director of aerospace and aviation at Cranfield University, told the PA news agency: 'I can only imagine that he was thrown from the wreckage, and that somehow as it crashed, what it hit managed to absorb some of the impact.'
He went on: 'Looking at the scene, I would imagine that the disruption to the aircraft would have been huge.
'If anybody could have got out, then they probably could have just gone out in a gap in the fuselage.'
He added: 'At the point that an aircraft like that hits a building and catches fire, there's probably not too much you can do in that situation beyond being lucky about where you're sat.'
'Even I couldn't believe'
'It's a miracle at least one of them survived,' younger brother Nayankumar Ramesh
told the Daily Mail from his home in Leicester.
Advertisement
The death toll currently stands at 265, including at least 24 others killed on the ground.
The Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane, which was full of fuel as it took off for a long-haul flight to London, exploded into a burst of orange flame just after taking off.
Videos shared on social media showed Ramesh soon after, dressed in a bloodied t-shirt and limping, but walking towards an ambulance.
Here is Ramesh Vishwas Kumar, seated on 11A in the ill fated Air India flight, walking out ALIVE from the fireball.
It is just like Bruce Willis' character, the lone survivor in a catastrophic train crash in M. Night Shyamalan's movie Unbreakable (2000).
— Sangha/ਸੰਘਾ/संघा/سنگھا (@FarmStudioz)
June 12, 2025
Speaking from his hospital bed today, he struggled to explain how he miraculously walked away from the fireball explosion.
'Everything happened in front of me, and even I couldn't believe how I managed to come out alive from that,' Ramesh said from his hospital bed, speaking in Hindi to national broadcaster DD News.
'Within a minute after takeoff, suddenly… it felt like something got stuck… I realised something had happened, and then suddenly the plane's green and white lights turned on,' Ramesh said.
'After that, the plane seemed to speed up, heading straight towards what turned out to be a hostel of a hospital. Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened.'
British crash survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh describes his escape from the Air India plane in Ahmedabad.
Everyone on the plane died, except for him.
— Sky News (@SkyNews)
June 13, 2025
Another news channel, India TV, reported that Ramesh said: 'The aircraft wasn't gaining altitude and was just gliding before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded.
'Everything happened in seconds. I realised we were going down.'
'I still don't understand'
He told India TV that he thought he was dead but realised he was alive when saw an opening in the fuselage.
'I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out,' said Ramesh.
Read Next
Related Reads
Death toll at Air India plane crash site rises to 265, with one surviving passenger found
'Many of the bodies were burned': Black smoke rises over the scene of the Air India plane crash
'Everyone around me was either dead or dying. I still don't understand how I escaped.'
Meanwhile, he told Indian newspaper the Hindustan Times report that he 'saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me'.
'I think the side I was on was not facing the hostel,' he added. 'Where I landed was closer to the ground and there was space too and when my door broke – I saw that there was space, and I thought I could try to slip out.'
He added that he 'stood up and ran' and that there were piece of the plane all around him.
'Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital,' said Ramesh.
'My left hand got slightly burnt due to the fire, but an ambulance brought me to the hospital,' he said. 'The people here are taking good care of me.'
Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah meeting British plane crash survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh at a hospital in Ahmedabad
Alamy
Alamy
Air India said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian on board the flight bound for London's Gatwick airport, as well as 12 crew members.
The death toll currently stands at 265, police said.
Authorities have set up DNA testing for relatives of passengers and those killed on the ground to identify the scorched bodies and body parts.
-With additional reporting from Press Association and
© AFP 2025
Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article.
Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.
Learn More
Support The Journal
