The sole survivor of the Air India plane crash has appeared in public for the first time since his incredible escape from the burning aircraft, declaring it “a miracle” that he is alive. Vishwash Ramesh, 40, told how he crawled through a hole in the twisted fuselage to escape the doomed Dreamliner.
He unbuckled his seat belt, and with everyone around him dead or dying, he managed to crawl through an opening in the mangled fuselage. “I still don’t understand how I escaped.” Locals and rescuers spotted him just after he staggered out of the compound of the medical college where the plane had crashed. He had tried to go back to the burning wreck to look for his brother, Ajay, who was also on the flight, before paramedics led him to an ambulance.
He was discharged from hospital on Tuesday and has since returned to the family home, where his parents, Bava and Manibhai, are now supporting him along with his wife and child and younger brother Nayan after flying from Leicester.
Mr Ramesh told of the moment he knew there was a problem
He said: “It felt like something got stuck and the lights started flickering. “Everything happened in seconds. I realised we were going down.” The pilot, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 55, radioed air traffic control, yelling: “No thrust… May Day…May Day.” Mr Ramesh continued: “The aircraft wasn’t gaining altitude and was just gliding. “After that, the plane seemed to speed up, before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded. “Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened.”
“I too thought that I was about to die, but then I opened my eyes and realised that I was still alive,” he added, The Sun reported.
Mr Ramesh is now struggling with survivor’s guilt because he tried to arrange two seats next to each other in row 11 by the emergency exits. By the time he came to choose seats, the brothers had to sit separately. Mr Ramesh was sat in Seat 11A, while Ajay was on the other side of the aisle in 11J and died along with 240 other passengers and crew.
“If we had been sat together we both might have survived,” he said.
“I tried to get two seats together but someone had already got one. Me and Ajay would have been sitting together.
“But I lost my brother in front of my eyes. So now I am constantly thinking ‘Why can’t I save my brother?’
“It’s a miracle I survived. I am okay physically but I feel terrible that I could not save Ajay.”