The sole survivor of the Air India plane crash told Friday how he crawled out of an emergency door — while one of his brothers was among more than 240 killed, despite being just seats away.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was on Thursday filmed limping in a bloodstained T-shirt with bruises on his face, still clutching his boarding pass for the Boeing 787 that crashed in a residential neighborhood in Ahmedabad.
The married dad miraculously walked away when the plane broke apart, with his section landing unexploded on the ground while other chunks hit a building, bursting into a giant fireball.
“When I opened my eyes, I realized I was alive,” he said from his hospital bed on Friday, where he was visited by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.
“The side of the plane I was in landed on the ground, and I could see that there was space outside the aircraft, so when my door broke, I tried to escape through it,” the British national told Indian state media DD News.
“I saw people dying in front of my eyes — the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me,” he recalled, saying there “were bodies all around me.”
“I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out. I still can’t believe how I survived. I walked out of the rubble.”
Ramesh was in seat 11A, while all around him died, including a brother, Ajaykumar Ramesh, 35, who was in 11J, the same row but the other side.
“No one could have got out from the opposite side, which was towards the wall, because it crashed there,” said Ramesh.
The survivor had been on the phone with his dad just before takeoff — then called back just two minutes later after he escaped, another brother, Nayan, told Sky News from their hometown, Leicester.
“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 said.
“I’ve got no words to describe it,” Nayan said. “It’s a miracle that he survived.”
A black box was recovered from the crash site Friday, but investigators say they still do not know the cause of the crash that killed the other 229 passengers and 12 crew members onboard.
Ramesh said that the plane seemed to stall midair for a few seconds after takeoff, with green and white lights coming on as the plane struggled to gain height and quickly came crashing down.
Photos showed how the Boeing split apart, with sections on the ground and others sticking out of a doctors’ residence where many others are expected to have died. The crash sparked a massive fireball, with charred bodies seen on the ground.
Vishwash suffered burns on his left hand and walked some distance in complete shock before he was assisted by locals and taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
Dr Dhaval Gameti, who treated the miracle survivor, said he was “disoriented, with multiple injuries all over his body” — but “out of danger.”
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived in his home state of Gujarat to visit the crash site, met Vishwash in the hospital on Friday.
“I told Modi what all I had witnessed. He also enquired about my health,” Ramesh said from his hospital bed.
Ajay Valgi, Vishwash’s cousin, told the BBC that Vishwash, who has a young child at home, called his family immediately after the crash.
“He only said that he’s fine, nothing else,” Valgi said, adding that the family is “happy that he’s OK, but we’re still upset about the other brother.”
Vishwash and Ajaykumar were in India on a business trip, Nayan said. Vishwash was formerly the sole director of textile company RMV Fashion, which shut down in 2022.
The plane went down around 1:30 p.m. local time Thursday in Ahmedabad, a city of about 5 million people in northwest India, just seconds after takeoff.
It was the worst aviation disaster in the last 10 years.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
With Post wires
