Air India Flight AI171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London’s Gatwick Airport, crashed into a residential area in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, moments after takeoff, killing 241 of the 242 people aboard and at least eight on the ground.
The sole survivor, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British national of Indian origin seated in 11A, emerged from the wreckage, bloodstained and disoriented, in a miraculous escape. The plane, carrying 230 passengers—169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese nationals, one Canadian—and 12 crew, departed Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 1:38 PM local time, only to plummet into Meghani Nagar’s medical college hostel after a loud bang echoed through the cabin.
Ramesh, traveling with his brother Ajay seated in a different row, recalled the plane shuddering 30 seconds after takeoff, its lights flickering as it stalled mid-air. “I opened my eyes, realized I was still alive,” he recounted from his hospital bed in Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital, his face bruised and bandaged. Seated near an emergency exit, Ramesh unbuckled his seatbelt, kicked open a broken door, and crawled through a jagged opening in the fuselage, landing on a debris-strewn street soaked by monsoon rains. Medics, rushing through smoke and screams, whisked him to safety as flames engulfed the wreckage, where twisted seats and shattered luggage lay scattered amid the hostel’s crumpled dining hall.
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