A 40-year-old man from London is currently the only survivor of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad this morning. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who said he has lived in London with his wife and child for the last 20 years, said he survived the crash and that problems immediately began after take off.
Flight AI171 bound for London Gatwick was carrying 242 people, 53 of whom were Britons, crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad, smashing into a building at 1.40pm local time (8.10am London time), hundreds of metres from the end of the runway. Vishwash was sitting in seat 11A, the Hindustan Times reported, and still had his boarding pass with him.
He reportedly jumped off the plane during the crash, as he was sat near an emergency exit, India Today said.
Vishwash told the Hindustan Times: “When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.”
Vishwash said he had been travelling to the nearby town of Diu with his brother Ajay, who was seated in a different row. “I can’t find him anymore. Please help me find him,” Vishwash pleaded.
A video circulating online shows Vishwash with injuries to his face and a blood-stained shirt, limping away from the incident and shrugging off help from crowding bystanders.
Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik confirmed that one passenger survived in the Air India plane crash, news agency ANI reported. Malik said: “The police found one survivor in seat 11A. One survivor has been found in the hospital and is under treatment. Cannot say anything about the number of deaths yet. The death toll may increase as the flight crashed in a residential area.”
Seat maps of the Air India Boeing 797-8 Dreamliner from Aerolopa show that seat 11A is next to an emergency exit and is the first row of economy seating, located in front of the wings. The plane climbed roughly 400 feet before plummeting into a hostel building of the BJ Medical College and Hospital.
Looking for more from MyLondon? Subscribe to our daily newsletters here for the latest and greatest updates from across London.
