The sole survivor of last week’s Air India crash has opened up about his terrifying ordeal. Brit Vishwash Ramesh, 40, miraculously emerged alive from the wreckage of the doomed flight AI171.
The plane was moments into its flight to London Gatwick from Ahmedabad, when disaster struck. The aircraft came down in a residential area, killing 241 of the people on board, as well as dozens of members of the public on the ground.
Vishwash was travelling with his brother Ajay back to his home in Leicester after a trip to the subcontinent.
Tragically, his brother perished in the crash, but Vishwash – sitting in seat 11A – survived and was able to scramble to safety through a hole in the twisted fuselage.
In an interview with The Sun, he said: “It’s a miracle I survived,”, adding he was feeling fine physically but was racked by grief over the death of his brother.
The 40-year-old had earlier talked to reporters about the horrifying moment the plane went down, describing horror scenes of death and destruction.
Vishwash said: “Right in front of my eyes, I saw air hostesses, uncles, aunties dying.”
Flight safety experts were astonished that anyone managed to survive the crash.
Most view the air disaster as a “non-survivable crash”, raising the question of how Vishwash was able to emerge alive.
One theory is that the seat where he was sitting was within the strongest part of the aeroplane.
Professor Edwin Galea – a director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich – told the Telegraph: “The physically strongest part of the aircraft is the part of the fuselage where the wings are, called the wing box.
“It’s where the wings joined to the fuselage. That’s the strongest part of the aircraft because there’s the most structure there.
“And I believe seat 11A is just at the front of that very strong part of the aircraft. That may have been a factor again.”
The Air India chair N Chandrasekaran insisted that the Boeing Dreamliner jet had a “clean history”, and that both engines had recently been serviced.
