‘Bodies, pieces of plane around me’: What the first survivor of Air India flight crash said

Vishwash Kumar, who still had his boarding pass, told HT that there were bodies and pieces of the plane all around him.

Published on: Jun 12, 2025, 21:38:29 IST

Reported by Maulik Pathak

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Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the only survivor of the fatal Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad so far, has described the horror he witnessed.

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British national, was in India for a few days to visit his family and was going back. (PTI and HT photo)

“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” Vishwash, who is admitted at the Civil Hospital, Asarwa in Ahmedabad, told Hindustan Times.

He had received “impact injuries” on his chest, eyes and feet. Vishwas was in India to visit his family and was going back to the UK along with his brother. He was seated at 11A, near the emergency exit.

Also Read | Surviving passenger walks after jumping from crashed Ahmedabad plane

Vishwash, who still had his boarding pass, told HT that there were bodies and pieces of the plane all around him.

“When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital,” Vishwash told HT.

Air India plane crash

Air India said that the flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8, crashed into a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad minutes after taking off on Thursday afternoon.

The Boeing aircraft had 242 passengers and crew members. Of the total passengers onboard, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, 1 Canadian national, and 7 Portuguese nationals.

Also Read | Bone chilling video of Air India plane's fatal crash which resulted in 204 deaths

According to Ahmedabad city police commissioner, G S Malik, at least 204 bodies have been recovered from the site of the accident.

As reported by Hindustan Times, the plane took off at 1:39pm and made a “Mayday” call just minutes later, signalling an emergency. It did not respond thereafter.

A CCTV footage has captured the harrowing moment the flight took off from Ahmedabad airport before crashing into a student hostel shortly. The video shows the aircraft taking off from the runway, gaining altitude briefly before descending sharply, crashing, and erupting into a fireball.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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