New video shows sole Air India survivor walking away from crash
New video footage has shown the British sole survivor of the Air India crash walking away from its fiery wreckage.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, walked away from the crash of Air India flight 171 after climbing out of the broken emergency exit door next to him.
Footage shows Mr Ramesh emerging from the crash site as smoke billows behind him. Wearing a white T-shirt, he was spotted by a passer-by and taken to safety.
Mr Ramesh had been sitting in seat 11A on the plane, next to the emergency doors over the front of the wings. It is the structurally most robust part of a plane and gives passengers the best chance of escaping a crash if they survive the initial impact.
His brother, Ajay, is thought to have died in the disaster.
Mr Ramesh told last week of how he saw air hostesses die before him as he made his escape.
The businessman, who had been flying back to the UK after tending to his business in India, told the Indian state broadcaster DD News from his hospital bed: 'I don't believe how I survived. For some time I thought I was also going to die.
'But when I opened my eyes I realised I was alive, and I tried to unbuckle myself from the seat and escape from where I could.
'I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me ... I walked out of the rubble.'
Mr Ramesh continued: 'The side of the plane I was in landed on the ground, and I could see that there was space outside the aircraft. So when my door broke I tried to escape through it, and I did.
'The opposite side of the aircraft was blocked by a building wall [of a doctors' hostel where the plane crashed], so nobody could have come out of there.'
He said the plane appeared to almost come to a standstill in mid-air for a few seconds shortly after take-off, and the green and white cabin lights were flickering.
He added that he could feel the engine thrust increasing, but then the plane 'crashed with speed'.
Doctors told local media that Mr Ramesh did not sustain any major injuries, and he said he walked out of the crash site with only burn injuries on his left arm.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crash was one of the deadliest plane crashes in terms of the number of British nationals killed, and the first involving a 787-8.
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