The survivor of the Air India Flight 171 crash Thursday revealed he miraculously survived by escaping through a broken emergency exit.
There were 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, bound for London, that crashed shortly after takeoff in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, smashing in a fiery blast into a medical college hostel, killing and injuring more people on the ground.
The plane crashed into a hostel for the B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital (BJMC). As a result, four students at BJMC died, six relatives of resident doctors died and 24 are undergoing treatment, the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA) Doctors Association said Friday.
It was the worst aviation disaster in a decade. Ramesh Viswashkumar, 40, was the sole person aboard the doomed flight to survive.
“I can’t explain. Everything was happening in my eye. I can’t explain,” Viswashkumar, a British national of Indian origin, told DD News, an Indian state-owned broadcaster Friday.
Police said Viswashkumar was in seat 11A, near an emergency exit. Viswashkumar, visibly cut up from the crash, said he was able to escape moments before the blast when the emergency door broke.
“Emergency door is broken. My seat is broken. Then I see the space a little bit and I will try to come out,” he told DD News. He was able to get out as the aircraft caught fire.
“Little bit of fire, after I’m out, then blast,” he recalled.
Footage of the crash showed a massive ball of fire as the plane’s full fuel tanks exploded, filling the sky with thick black smoke.
Survivability is “extremely limited” in plane crashes like the one that happened in Ahmedabad yesterday, said Trevor Bock, a safety consultant at Aviation Safety Asia.
A large, heavy aircraft will be torn apart by the enormous amount of energy it carries as the plane hits the ground, he said. “We’re talking thousands of kilograms of weight,” adding that the plane, which has just taken off, had “a lot of fuel.”
