As investigators start trying to piece together what caused Thursday's devastating Air India crash in Ahmedabad that killed nearly all of the 242 on board and dozens more on the ground, focus is now turning to the lone person on the plane who survived the crash. Police say that Viswash Kumar Ramesh, said to be in his late 30s or early 40s, was sitting near one of Flight AI171's emergency exits, in seat 11A, when the Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London crashed just minutes after takeoff, reports Reuters.
Ramesh apparently jumped out of the plane via one of those exits after the crash, authorities say, though it's not clear if he jumped out before the plane slammed into the ground. Speaking from the hospital where he was rushed after the accident, Ramesh, a UK national, says he'd been traveling with his brother back to Britain after visiting family in India. "When I got up, there were bodies all around me," he told the Hindustan Times. "I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me."
He added that someone then "grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance." The New York Times reports that Ramesh called his family just minutes after the accident, telling them, "I don't know how I am alive." The Times of India has video that appears to be of a bloodied Ramesh stumbling toward the ambulance with people milling about him, as he is said to have exclaimed in Gujarati, "The plane exploded! The plane exploded!" The Hindustan Times reports that Indian PM Narendra Modi visited with Ramesh in the hospital on Friday. India TV, meanwhile, has a list of other sole survivors of fatal plane crashes. (More Air India stories.)
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