One survivor found on the plane that crashed in India shortly after takeoff

LondonA British citizen is the only known survivor of the Air India flight that crashed Thursday, just seconds after takeoff. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, of London, described from his hospital bed seeing bodies everywhere after the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plummeted 190 meters into a densely populated suburb of Ahmedabad. Police reported that the survivor was in seat 11A. They also said that between the 241 passengers who died and the casualties caused by the accident on the ground, there were more than 290 deaths. "Everything happened very fast," explained Ramesh, who suffered injuries to his face, chest, and feet. It is still unclear how he survived, but some parts of the plane appeared to have remained intact after the impact.

"When I woke up, there were bodies everywhere. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me," the survivor told theHindustan Times From the hospital. Air India flight AI171, en route from Ahmedabad to Gatwick Airport in south London, was scheduled to land at 6:30 p.m. local time. There were 242 people on board, ten of them cabin crew. At the time of takeoff, weather and visibility conditions were optimal. The control tower received a distress call moments before the fatal accident, which caused a huge explosion and a huge cloud of smoke.

The causes, a mystery

Immediately after takeoff, and for reasons that are still unknown, the aircraft – a Boeing 787/8 Dreamliner – began to lose altitude from the aforementioned height of 190 metres, according to the Fly-Radar log. It had been flying for less than a minute at a speed of around 50.

Some of the images broadcast by local television stations, as well as photographs released by news agencies, show the tail of the plane sticking out of a building it crashed into, in an area known as New Mental Campus. The damaged building, the BJ Medical Hostel, was occupied by resident doctors and students working at the nearby civil hospital, and eyewitnesses feared a large number of doctors were fatally involved in the tragedy. If the figures provided so far by the police are correct, there could be as many as fifty.

The plane was carrying 169 citizens with Indian passports, 53 British, 7 Portuguese, and 1 Canadian.

According to the initial analysis by specialist Geoffrey Thomas, which he has presented to the BBC, and in line with the images that can be seen through social networks, "the plane simply sank." There is no oscillation from side to side, which could indicate a mechanical or control problem. "It seemed, on the surface, that the plane was landing, completely under control, but it sank directly to the ground," he explained.

In other words, one possibility is that normal takeoff operations would not have been "followed correctly," according to Thomas' assessment. In the images that have been able to be seen, the landing gear was still deployed when the plane crashed, but the flaps - the movable surfaces located near of the wing exit, at the rear - "had already been retracted, in principle, much more quickly than necessary." If they fold too soon, the specialist assured, "the support produced by the wing is reduced at a critical moment of the takeoff maneuver," to such an extent that it can fall.

Although the crashed plane is a Boeing, the Dreamliner 787/8 model is not the infamous 737 MAX, at the epicenter of the accidents in Ethiopia (2018) and Indonesia (2019), where all the occupants died. instance, caused its fall. Boeing, in any case, returns to the eye of the storm after a few difficult years. Very recently, in 2024, there was also the incident with Alaska Airlines, in which a door flew out literally mid-flight on a domestic route to the United States. Following Thursday's crash in India, Boeing's stock market shares have dropped almost 7%.

The crashed 787 was one of the first of this Boeing model delivered to Air India. The Dreamliner entered service in 2011 and has since carried one billion passengers without the model being involved in a fatal accident until today's tragedy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to X after the crash: "The tragedy in Ahmedabad has left us shocked and deeply saddened. It is an indescribable pain. At this sad hour, my thoughts are with all those affected." British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also expressed his condolences.