A new video appears to show the British passenger who was the only person to survive a horror plane crash in India emerging from the fiery wreckage. The clip, obtained by the Hindustan Times, shows Vishwash Kumar Ramesh walking away from the crash site as black smoke and flames continue to billow behind him. The 40-year-old defied all odds when he survived the collision of the Gatwick Airport-bound plane with a medical college near Ahmedabad Airport in Gujarat on Thursday.
More than 240 people died after the aircraft exploded in a fireball shortly after take-off, including over 50 British nationals. Mr Ramesh, who has lived in the UK for 20 years and was visiting family in India, was previously caught on camera walking away from the debris in clothes stained with blood. He told DD News that he “couldn’t believe he had survived” the crash, which is the first involving a Boeing 787 and among the deadliest in terms of the number of British casualties.
Mr Ramesh, who was sat in seat 11A, near an emergency exit, also told the Indian broadcaster that it felt like the plane was “stuck in the air” seconds after take-off, before it suddenly “slammed into a building and exploded”.
He sid: “At first, I thought I was dead. Later, I realised I was still alive and saw an opening in the fueselage. I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening and crawled out.”
“I don’t know how I survived,” the 40-year-old added. “I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses and two people I saw near me … I walked out of the rubble.”
The sole survivor “is doing very well and will be ready to be discharged from the Civil Hospital in Adhmedabad very soon”, a doctor told the Associated Press.
UK air accident investigators arrived in India on Friday, with information recovered from a black box flight recorder expected to shed light on the cause of the collision.
Commercial airline pilot and crash analyst Steve Schreiber suggested a new video of the aircraft crashing into the medical college showed the Boeing suffering a dual engine failure, as it rapidly lost height just seconds after take-off.
Mr Shreiber said the 787’s Ram Air Turbine was shown being deployed in the newly-released footage, something that would be triggered by a huge electrical, hydraulic or dual engine failure – with the latter the most likely scenario, in his opinion.
Alongside 53 Britons, the plane was carrying 169 Indian nationals, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian.