Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the only British survivor of Air India flight AI171 that crashed on Thursday with 241 other people on board in the city of Ahmedabad, said on Friday from his hospital bed that he still can’t believe how he managed to survive this tragedy.
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The Air India flight AI171 traveling from Ahmedabad in western India to London, crashed on Thursday just a few minutes after takeoff. The company confirmed that there were 230 passengers on board: 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian, in addition to twelve crew members.
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The collision against a medical school building also left five dead and around fifty injured.
This is one of the deadliest airplane accidents in the history of India.
How did the only survivor of the plane crash in India manage to survive?
“For a moment, I felt like I was going to die too, but when I opened my eyes and looked around, I realized I was alive. I still can’t believe how I survived,” he told the Indian television network DD News.
“I can’t believe how I made it out of that alive,” insisted the 40-year-old man, who explained that shortly after takeoff the plane felt like it was “stuck in the air” before the emergency lights started flashing, and then suddenly crashed into a building.
Ramesh, who received a visit from the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, on Friday, told the media that he managed to escape through an opening in the fuselage: “I managed to unbuckle my belt, push with my foot an opening in the fuselage, and crawled out.”
“I saw people die in front of my eyes. The flight attendants and two people I saw near me. I got out from the debris,” recalled Ramesh, who was seated in seat 11A, next to one of the emergency exits.
How did the Air India accident occur?
The firefighters found one of the black boxes on Thursday night, as reported by The Indian Express newspaper.
Many airplanes are usually equipped with two of these devices, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.
Awaiting an official explanation and the discovery of a second black box, some hypotheses suggest that there may have been an engine failure due to a bird strike, or that one of the wing flaps of the aircraft was not in the correct position during takeoff.
Tata Group, the parent company of Air India, reported that it will compensate the families of each of the deceased in the crash with ten million rupees (115 thousand dollars) each. They will also cover the medical expenses of the injured and the reconstruction of the medical school where part of the aircraft crashed.
At the moment, authorities have managed to rescue about 80 people from the rubble. The government reported yesterday that around a thousand DNA tests would be conducted between the victims and their relatives in order to identify everyone, at which point official accident figures will be provided.