Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40-year-old Briton, was the only person to live to tell the tale of the recent Air India crash. Tragically, the incident resulted in the deaths of 241 passengers and crew. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, on a flight from Ahmedabad to London, went down shortly after takeoff. On impact, the aircraft exploded in a fireball. Ramesh in seat 11A, the emergency exit with extra legroom. This surprisingly strategic position, in hindsight, was probably the main reason that Don survived.
As it turned out, the aircraft didn’t take off with enough fuel for the trip to London Gatwick. The fatal crash happened just 55 seconds later. This fuel burst into flames on impact, creating a fireball that made survival even more difficult for those on board. Ramesh was extraordinarily lucky. He soon realized that he had lucked out and was sitting close to the “wing box,” the most structurally robust section of the entire fuselage. Given this structural advantage it is possible that he was protected from the impact.
As the plane was landing, Ramesh needed to make some quick decisions to make the most of his opportunity to survive.
“It’s possible that the impact loosened the door and he could kick it out and get out,” said Professor John McDermid, an aviation safety expert. Ramesh Passenger seat 11A, directly next to an emergency exit. That empty space was not just flammable luxury—given the turbulence that soon followed the initial crash, it all provided extra margin for him to navigate.
For Ramesh, the first assumption was that he had died in the accident. But then he was surprised to see an opening in the fuselage, and through that gap, his way out. With flames spreading in a matter of seconds, it was imperative that he remove himself from danger in just a few seconds. If he had waited, there would have been no chance of escape.
“The fact that anyone has survived is miraculous,” noted Professor Ed Galea. What he really drove home was the improbability of surviving a crash of a fully fueled craft into a developed world. If you’re going to have an accident of that type where you’ve got a very heavy aircraft full of fuel and it’s making a crash landing off the airport into the built environment, that would not likely be a survivable accident.
Perhaps more than luck, Ramesh’s escape is due to the importance of where he chose to sit. It’s very possible that, like the person who survived the ATSB evacuation, just being within five rows of an emergency exit impacted his ability to get out quickly.
“He seems to have been lucky in that: a) he survived the trauma of the impact, b) he wasn’t severely injured in that crash, and c) he was sitting right by the No 2 exit,” Prof Galea explained.
In his good fortune, Professor McDermid went on to provide more detail on Ramesh’s lucky break. “My suspicion is that because of the nature of the impact, he was in a strong part of the airplane at the front edge of the wing,” he stated. During the crash, that same structural integrity of the wing might have provided some measure of extra protection, he said.
He emerged physically unscathed from the wreckage of flight AI171. Now, he struggles with the daily life of having survived such a traumatic event. The accident’s deadly consequences were not limited to those in the air; the horrendous toll on the ground was vast.