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LAST UPDATE | 13 Jun
IT’S BEEN DESCRIBED as the “Miracle of Seat 11A” and the passenger in question is at a loss to explain it.
British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was the only survivor of 242 people aboard a London-bound passenger plane that crashed in the Indian city of Ahmedabad yesterday.
He was sitting in seat 11A, which is next to one of the aircraft’s emergency exits.
His brother, who was sitting on the other side of the aisle in seat 11J, was among those killed in the explosion.
Ramesh told India TV that he thought he was dead but realised he was alive when saw an opening in the fuselage that he managed to push through.
However, a professor in aviation told The Journal that there is no merit in passengers opting for seat 11A in the future as a result of this “miracle”.
Professor Stephen Wright, Head of Discipline at the School of Transport and Aviation at Technological University Dublin, said the strongest part of the plane is over the wings and that statistically speaking, seat 11A is “not the best place”.
“This is just sheer luck and the person has been very fortunate to survive.”
Meanwhile, he said the real story is how such an event could happen to a “fantastic modern plane brimming with the latest technologies”.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane has been flying since 2009 and Wright said the plane has a “very good safety record” – this is the first fatal incident on this type of plane.
And when Wright was asked how unlikely it is to survive such a crash, he described it as a “miracle”.
Wright added that this is the first time he has commented on a plane crash where there is just one survivor.
“Whatever he’s been doing, somebody likes him somewhere, would be my view on this. He’s a very fortunate individual.”
Elsewhere, Professor Graham Braithwaite, director of aerospace and aviation at Cranfield University, told the PA news agency that it would be a “struggle” to infer that seat 11A is in some way safer than other seats.
“I can only imagine that he was thrown from the wreckage, and that somehow as it crashed, what it hit managed to absorb some of the impact,” said Braithwaite.
He went on: “Looking at the scene, I would imagine that the disruption to the aircraft would have been huge.
“If anybody could have got out, then they probably could have just gone out in a gap in the fuselage.”
He added: “At the point that an aircraft like that hits a building and catches fire, there’s probably not too much you can do in that situation beyond being lucky about where you’re sat.”
‘It’s a miracle at least one of them survived,’ younger brother Nayankumar Ramesh told the Daily Mail from his home in Leicester.
The death toll currently stands at 265, including at least 24 others killed on the ground.
The Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane, which was full of fuel as it took off for a long-haul flight to London, exploded into a burst of orange flame just after taking off.
Videos shared on social media showed Ramesh soon after, dressed in a bloodied t-shirt and limping, but walking towards an ambulance.
Here is Ramesh Vishwas Kumar, seated on 11A in the ill fated Air India flight, walking out ALIVE from the fireball.
— Sangha/ਸੰਘਾ/संघा/سنگھا (@FarmStudioz) June 12, 2025
It is just like Bruce Willis’ character, the lone survivor in a catastrophic train crash in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Unbreakable (2000).pic.twitter.com/hwkBQ1KfeG
Speaking from his hospital bed today, he struggled to explain how he miraculously walked away from the fireball explosion.
“Everything happened in front of me, and even I couldn’t believe how I managed to come out alive from that,” Ramesh said from his hospital bed, speaking in Hindi to national broadcaster DD News.
“Within a minute after takeoff, suddenly… it felt like something got stuck… I realised something had happened, and then suddenly the plane’s green and white lights turned on,” Ramesh said.
“After that, the plane seemed to speed up, heading straight towards what turned out to be a hostel of a hospital. Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened.”
British crash survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh describes his escape from the Air India plane in Ahmedabad.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 13, 2025
Everyone on the plane died, except for him.https://t.co/czOsM5ZWRp pic.twitter.com/Va9cfnaILe
Another news channel, India TV, reported that Ramesh said: “The aircraft wasn’t gaining altitude and was just gliding before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded.
“Everything happened in seconds. I realised we were going down.”
He told India TV that he thought he was dead but realised he was alive when saw an opening in the fuselage.
“I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out,” said Ramesh.
“Everyone around me was either dead or dying. I still don’t understand how I escaped.”
Meanwhile, he told Indian newspaper the Hindustan Times report that he “saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me”.
“I think the side I was on was not facing the hostel,” he added. “Where I landed was closer to the ground and there was space too and when my door broke – I saw that there was space, and I thought I could try to slip out.”
He added that he “stood up and ran” and that there were piece of the plane all around him.
“Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital,” said Ramesh.
“My left hand got slightly burnt due to the fire, but an ambulance brought me to the hospital,” he said. “The people here are taking good care of me.”
Air India said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian on board the flight bound for London’s Gatwick airport, as well as 12 crew members.
The death toll currently stands at 265, police said.
Authorities have set up DNA testing for relatives of passengers and those killed on the ground to identify the scorched bodies and body parts.
-With additional reporting from Press Association and © AFP 2025
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