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