Air India crash survivor speaks out

The sole survivor of the British Air India disaster has revealed how he 'just walked out' of the burning plane as he admitted it is a 'miracle' that he has been left with only minor injuries. British national Viswash Kumar Ramesh, 40, said that he was in India with his brother for the best part of a year and was returning to London, where his family live, on the Gatwick-bound aircraft on Thursday. He was seated in 11A on the doomed flight from Ahmedabad, which is said to be one of the worst in India's aviation history, having claimed the lives of 279 people so far.
Among the victims believed to be dead, which includes 53 British nationals, is the 40-year-old's brother Ajay Kumar, 35, who was sat on the other side of the aisle in seat 11J perished in the fireball explosion. Vishwash, who is being treated at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, just a short distance from where the plane crashed into buildings, has spoken of the moment he escaped from the burning plane. While sitting up in his seat, he told DD India, that he was 'feeling better than yesterday' and that the 'treatment is going good'. Still in shock, he admitted he 'can't explain' everything that he witnessed as the plane plummeted to the ground.
He managed to escape after his side of the plane fell onto the ground of a floor building, forcing his way out of the plane past a broken door, before being assisted by locals and taken to hospital in an ambulance. 'The emergency door was broken, my seat is broken,' he said. Asked if he escaped the plane by jumping to the ground, he replied: 'I am not jumping. I just walked out innit.' 'It's a miracle,' he said when discussing his survival and injuries. His doctor added: 'He is having minor injuries only. He has some abrasions over his left forearm and swelling over left eyelid and over the eyes.
'Chest and abdomen is clear, no lung fractures present. The patient is vitally stable.' He added Vishwash had not complained of nausea, vomiting or any sort of fever. It is now anticipated to be released in the next 48 hours, his relatives have said. Jigar Chunilal, who has been at his bedside since he was filmed walking away from the crash site dazed and bloodied, said: 'Not only is it a miracle that he survived but it's also a miracle that he had no serious injuries. He's still very shocked that he's still alive and so are we. 'The doctors have told us that he can go home within the next two days and that is incredible, but we are not sure when he will be leaving for the UK. He suffered some minor burns but no fractures, broken bones or any serious internal injuries.'
Mr Ramesh's parents, Manibhai and Bava, wife Hiral and two brothers, Sunnykumar and Nayankumar are expected to arrive in Ahmedabad over the weekend to visit him after leaving the UK on Friday night. Mr Chunilal added: 'We don't want to say too much because this is a very difficult time for us all. On one hand we are very happy that Viswashkumar survived but at the same time we are in mourning for Ajay.' He added that as per Hindu custom, the family are keen to carry out Ajay's funeral as quickly as possible and will not return to the UK until this is done. Earlier today, UK investigators with experience in aircraft operations, engineering and recorded data, arrived in the south Asian country in the wake of the tragedy.
Terrifying CCTV footage showed the Boeing 787 Dreamliner careen to the ground shortly after take off in the densely populated Meghani area of the city at around 1.40pm local time (8.10am BST). Detailing the moments after the crash, Viswash described seeing several passengers and crew lose their lives as parts of the plane were scattered around the site. Still clutching his boarding pass at the hospital, he called his father in the aftermath of the tragedy. His brother Nyan told Sky News: 'He video called my dad as he crashed and said, 'Oh the plane's crashed. I don't know where my brother is. 'I don't see any other passengers. I don't know how I'm alive, how I exited the plane'.' Devastatingly, injured Viswash had been begging from his hospital bed: 'Find Ajay, you must find Ajay.'
His cousin, Ajay Valgi, told the BBC , how Viswash has a wife and 'little boy' at home: adding: 'He only said that he's fine, nothing else. [We are] happy that he's OK, but we're still upset about the other brother.' Previously said of his younger cousin's, Ajay's death, Mr Valgi: 'I'm feeling absolutely upset. He's not just my cousin, he's also one of my best friends as well. 'They were sitting next to each other, but we don't know what happened to [Ajay Kumar]. We're not doing well. We're all upset.' On Thursday, relatives gathered at the family's terraced home in Leicester to comfort the brothers' mother who is said to be too grief-stricken to speak. 'It's a miracle at least one of them survived,' younger brother Nayan said.
'He said his plane had crashed and he couldn't find anyone, we couldn't believe it. There was blood running down his face. The tragedy's death toll has since increased to 279 dead, according to a senior Indian police source, making it one of the deadliest plane disasters of the 21st century. This is a further increase on an earlier figure of 265 victims, which includes those on the plane and ground. Air India said there were 242 people on board the London-bound flight, with only one survivor, with at least 38 people killed on the ground when the plane smashed into residential buildings. The official casualty number will not be finalised until the slow process of DNA identification is completed. The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) announced on Friday night that four of its investigators had arrived in India and have expertise in aircraft operations, engineering and recorded data.
The 'release of information on the investigation rests solely with the Indian authorities', it added. Air India said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian on board the flight, as well as 12 crew members. MailOnline previously revealed the British victims were Akeel Nanawaba, Hannaa Vorajee and their daughter Sarah, 4, Fiongal and Jamie Greenlaw-Meek, Javed Ali Syed, his wife and two children, Raxa Modha, her grandson Rudra and her daughter-in-law Yasha Kamdar, and Ajay Kumar Ramesh, the brother of the tragedy's only survivor. Relatives of Harrods ambassador Mariam Ali Syed, 35, her husband Javed - a manager at the Best Western Kensington Olympia Hotel - have spoken out since the tragedy.
The couple's children Zayn, five, and Amani, four, are believed to be the youngest named victims of the crash so far. Mrs Ali Syed's sister-in-law, Yasmine Hassan, 45, broke down while confirming the children's names, and pleaded with officials to offer more support to the families of the 53 British citizens onboard the flight. 'They are so small, they are five and four. And it's just thinking how scared they must have been,' she told the Telegraph . 'We're not angry about the lack of answers [from UK government officials] – we understand that takes time. 'We're angry because no one has reached out to offer support or even ask if we need anything. These are British citizens.'
Adam Taju, 72, and his wife Hasina, 70, were flying back to the UK with their son-in-law Altafhusen Patel, 51, when they lost their lives in the tragedy, The four had been spending time with Mr Taju's 96-year-old father in India to celebrate Eid, their son Altaf Taju told MailOnline. 'He's the one they wanted to see because he's 96 and it's very hot in India. No one goes to India this time of year but they said 'We don't know how long he's going to be around, let's go and celebrate Eid.' Altaf added: 'I'm the eldest person in the family now. I'm here with my sisters. I'm flying out with my two sisters. The other one can't make it as she's a cancer patient. Adam was a retired machinist who'd worked making leather coats and Hasina had been a housewife.
The couple, who had lived in a terraced property in Ilford since the 1970s, had four children, a boy and three girls. One of their daughters who lives has since flown back to Redbridge to be with family. Adam's son, Altaf Taju, told the Mail the family hoped to be flying out to India by Sunday, so they could conduct the burials next week. Mr Taju, who is from Blackburn, said he'd travelled down to London to support his sister Shamim who was married to Altafhusen Patel. Mr Taju said: 'I'm okay. I'm the eldest son of the family. My uncle rang me to tell me what had happened. 'We've lost three members of my family and my brother in law who's married to my sister. My sister is alone here.'
Explaining how burials of his family members will take place in their respective home villages, his mother and father in Sansrod, Gujarat, and his brother-in-law in Bharuch, Mr Taju called for the release of the bodies. 'We need to get the release of the bodies and bring them home and start mourning in the Islamic way, whatever is left of them,' he said. 'I have told them to wait for us, until we get there, because I want to put them down in the grave.' Friend and neighbour Iqbal Hussain, 44, who has known Adam and Hasina since he was a child, described them as a 'smiling' and 'loving family'.
'It's a sad thing. They were happy when they left [to go to India]. They were going on holiday to celebrate Eid,' he said. 'They were part of the Neighbourhood Watch group. We're all devastated. 'Anything they needed we'd help them with. They weren't very IT savvy and I used to help them out,' the IT manager added: 'We grew up with their children. I was friends with Afia, their youngest daughter.' Recalling the moment his local councillor who's from the Gujarat community informed him of the plane crash, as well as Adam and Hasina being on board, Mr Hussain said: ''I thought 'That cannot be true'. 'I called the youngest daughter [Afia]. She was crying. She didn't say much. All she said was 'Say prayers for my parents'. She was hoping they were okay and alive.'
Councillor Salim Patel described Adam as 'a wonderful man, a community man', who was 'always out and about supporting communities'. 'He will be very missed,' he said: 'It will take a very long time for this community to accept he's not there. It's a great loss, to lose him as a human being. 'Whatever the community needed he would stand up with the community, whether it was to help campaign against fly-tipping or help people in need during Covid. 'Whenever I needed his support, he would be there. 'He was a kind and humble gentleman. There are no words to describe how we are going to miss him. I've known him for nearly 30 years.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner issued a mayday call moments before it crashed around lunchtime on Thursday after lifting barely 100 metres (330 feet) from the ground. Investigators have also since recovered a black box recorder on Friday from the crash site, with forensic teams still looking for the second. US planemaker Boeing said it was in touch with Air India and stood 'ready to support them' over the incident, which a source close to the case said was the first crash for a 787 Dreamliner. It comes as an aviation expert believes the co-pilot on Air India flight AI171 pulled the plane's wing flaps instead of retracting the landing gear, causing the plane to crash.
Commercial airline pilot and YouTuber Captain Steve, who analyzes plane crashes and close calls, gave his theory on the incident which killed 241 people on board . The London -bound 787 Dreamliner began losing height moments after take-off and crashed in a fireball over a residential area in the Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Steve said he suspected there had been an exceptionally simple error in the cockpit when the co-pilot was asked to retract the landing gear, with devastating consequences. He said: 'Here's what I think happened, again folks this is just my opinion. I think the pilot flying said to the co-pilot said 'gear up' at the appropriate time.
'I think the co-pilot grabbed the flap handle and raised the flaps, instead of the gear. If that happened, this explains a lot of why this airplane stopped flying.' Steve said that the flaps being raised would cause the flight to lose airspeed and altitude quickly, something he thinks the pilot would have struggled to control. He explained his theory by saying the 787's composite wings would normally bend during take off as lift forces take it into the air. But the Air India plane appears to show no such bending, amid widespread speculation the flaps which help lift the plane off had accidentally been retracted. It remains unclear what caused Thursday's tragedy, with mechanical failure or pilot error among the possible causes that investigators will now work to identify. Among those believed to have died is Captain Sumeet Sabharwal , the pilot operating the Boeing 787.
Mr Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of experience, was named as the pilot of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. First Officer Clive Kunder, from Mumbai and who was co-piloting, had logged 1,100 of flying hours and completed his training at the Florida-based Paris Air Flight School. King Charles III and other members of the royal family wore black armbands and there was a moment of silence during his annual birthday parade on Saturday as the monarch commemorates those who died in this week's Air India plane crash. Charles requested the symbolic moves 'as a mark of respect for the lives lost, the families in mourning and all the communities affected by this awful tragedy,' Buckingham Palace said.

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At Crocker's Folly, a Lebanese bar in Maida Vale, they are still grumbling about the fires at the substation; a blank brick building that faces the restaurant across the quiet leafy street, whose purpose is only signalled by the yellow 'Danger of Death' notices on its walls. In an adjoining compound, you can still see the fire-blackened equipment, and men in high-vis jackets buzz around, seemingly engaged in making repairs. 'It was a real pain for us because they closed the road off for days after the first one so we couldn't open for customers,' says one of the staff, who thinks the station's owners still owe residents a proper explanation after two blazes in as many weeks. Was there foul play or was the equipment faulty? There's been talk of something being set on fire and thrown into the compound on April 29. But UK Power Networks hasn't been drawn: it simply says that an investigation is ongoing. 'It's a bit worrying if it's just going to keep catching fire,' the waitress says. In fairness, the electricity companies have been no more forthcoming in other cases. For instance, after the Exeter explosion, which took place just round the corner from the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, National Grid spoke vaguely of 'third party damage' and promised an investigation, while after the Nottingham blaze, the company apologised for a 'small electrical fire', while thanking customers for 'bearing with us as our teams work to restore supplies as quickly and safely as possible'. Granted, there's an understandable reason for their reticence: Britain has around 57,000 large (33 kilovolt or over) substations spread across the transmission and distribution networks – out of a total of more than 500,000. These are all unmanned, defended only by CCTV and sensors, and hence vulnerable to vandalism or other malign interference. But at a time of tension between Russia and the UK, the resulting informational void has invited speculation about Kremlin-backed sabotage. Oleksandr Danylyuk is one who sees the hand of Moscow behind recent events. 'It has the feel of a well-organised conspiracy – checking out resilience and vulnerabilities and whether they elicit diplomatic protests,' he says. An associate fellow of Britain's Royal United Services Institute, and an expert on Russian 'multi-dimensional warfare' against the West, Danylyuk is not alone in worrying about Kremlin-sponsored aggression. Last November, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Russia was conducting a 'staggeringly reckless' sabotage campaign in Europe, while the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, accused the Kremlin of seeking to create 'sustained mayhem' on British streets. In a report published in March this year, a US think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, noted that the number of Russian attacks in Europe almost tripled last year to 34 known incidents, of which around a fifth were against critical infrastructure targets, such as electricity grids, undersea cables and energy pipelines. This doesn't mean the streets need to be swarming with Russian saboteurs, Danylyuk points out. The GRU, Russia's military intelligence unit, often recruits locals or non-Russians for the purposes of deniability. Late last year, two young British nationals, Dylan Earl, 20, and Jake Reeves, 23, pleaded guilty to setting a fire at a warehouse in east London on behalf of the Wagner Group, a Russian state-funded private military company that is seen as an arm of the Kremlin. Danylyuk also sees the official veil of silence as entirely consistent with a Russian hybrid campaign. (After the North Hyde blaze, the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev even goaded the Government, saying he was 'looking forward to Russia being blamed for the Heathrow fire', and adding: 'What are you waiting for, Starmer?') Hybrid attacks on critical infrastructure fall uncomfortably close to the line of outright war, and politicians are consequently wary about reacting in case they inflame an already tense situation. 'There is no appetite in Western European governments to tell people about things such as sabotage when you are not really ready to do anything,' Danylyuk says. The main problem with the sabotage theory is a lack of hard evidence. While suspicions of vandalism hang over several of the fires, only in Glasgow has anyone been arrested. Elsewhere, the police have played down talk of organised sabotage. For instance, in the interim report into the still unexplained Heathrow incident by the National Energy System Operator (Neso), the state-run authority that controls the entire grid, the Met's counter terrorism unit was quoted as saying it 'found no evidence that the incident was suspicious in nature'. The final report is due by the end of June. There is also no sign of cyber attacks on substation control systems; the best way to shut down the entire facility and thus maximise the chaos from a single attack. Despite his earlier conjecture about foul play, Col Ingram is now wary of pointing the finger at Moscow, although he doesn't exclude its involvement. 'Experts I have spoken to with access to very sensitive areas say they have no evidence of anything untoward going down,' he says. Instead, he has come to believe the fires may be more a case of cock-up rather than foreign conspiracy. 'My primary view is that old infrastructure and poor maintenance – or the lack of maintenance – may be responsible for a lot of what we are seeing,' he observes. A perverse incentive Perhaps the most striking fact buried in Neso's interim report into the North Hyde fire was the sheer age of the equipment involved. The 275 kilovolt (kV) transformer blamed for the blaze was one of two installed when the substation was itself built in 1968, and manufactured by Hackbridge and Hewittic, a British brand name that disappeared in the early 1970s. Such venerable lifespans aren't out of the ordinary in British substations. Other vital devices such as circuit breakers (that cut off the power in the case of a fault) and switches (which route the current through the substation) also last for many decades. But transformers are a vital cog, enabling power to be stepped up to 400 kV so it can be transported over long distances without undue loss and then stepped back down to the 230 volts we use in our homes. Without them, the network simply couldn't function at all. A large part of the currently installed base was commissioned from the 1950s to the early 1970s – the last time Britain invested heavily in the network as it completed its electrification. Manufactured with a design life of around 40 years, these old transformers proved much more long-lived than expected. 'Basically, they were fantastically robust and once you had got them bedded in through the 1980s, the grid people really knew how to keep them running,' says one electrical engineer who formerly worked for National Grid. Then, in 1990, came a further incentive to eke out old equipment. The new privatised transmission and distribution ventures spun out of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and the boards found themselves in a world where regulators not only set prices; they determined how much companies could spend on replacing worn out electrical gear. Margaret Thatcher's administration had decreed the system should reward companies for being efficient, so if they could do it for less than the watchdog's capital expenditure (capex) 'allowance', they got to keep the difference. This new privatised system sliced up the network between transmission companies – responsible for running the 400 kV and 275 kV supergrids – and distribution companies (DNOs) that run wires to people's homes. Initially, most were listed on the stock market, but over the years, like much of British infrastructure, they were snapped up by specialist investors. For instance, UK Power Networks, the DNO that owns the Maida Vale substation, is owned by funds connected to Li Ka-shing, the Chinese billionaire, while Northern Powergrid belongs to Berkshire Hathaway, the investment vehicle of Warren Buffett. As one might expect, these financially-driven owners responded to the regulatory incentives. Over the past decade, they have generally underspent their allowances for replacing equipment, banking the extra income and helping to make electricity transmission and distribution business one of the highest margin sectors in the country. Between 2014 and 2021, for instance, transmission companies undershot their replacement capex allowance by 28 per cent, according to Ofgem data, while for DNOs between 2016 and 2023, the figure was 12 per cent. Recent analysis by Common Wealth, a Left-of-centre think tank, estimates they collectively spent just £1.5 billion annually last year on replacing equipment against an approved budget of £2 billion. Some see this system – which splits the resulting 'gains' between the companies and their customers – as a perverse incentive to skimp on capex. By setting broad rules which require companies to deliver outcomes such as network performance targets while letting them decide how (and if) to spend the allowance, Ofgem may think it is empowering companies to be more efficient. But insiders point to a culture of 'asset-sweating' that has left most substations with primitive analogue control systems, ancient concrete gantries, and a lack of modern monitoring gear designed to forestall outages. 'It's a systemic issue: the companies won't spend money on things that bring them no extra revenue, even if having those things would be good for the network as a whole,' says one, who thinks the lack of monitoring equipment contributed to the massive North Hyde outage. The result is an increasingly aged network. Of the roughly £70 billion (in 2023-24 prices) of assets on transmission company balance sheets, around £30 billion, or 40 per cent, dates from before 1975. This creates a creeping fragility. 'This old gear can't last forever,' says Mathew Lawrence of Common Wealth, adding that when companies are challenged about skimping on capex, they say: ''Ah, but we will catch up when it's really needed'. It's like a football manager who loses his first five games saying he'll win the next seven.' One nagging vulnerability lies in the oil that transformers use for insulation. A former CEGB engineer warns that any ingress of water can reduce the insulation properties and increase the risk of electricity arcing and fires. Such contamination inevitably becomes more likely with age. Another is that old plants often lack modern safety features, for instance the North Hyde plant had no concrete blast walls separating the transformers – something that has been required since the 1970s, but substation owners aren't required to retrofit. So when plants go bang, the damage will be worse. 'Dirty power' To many electricity insiders, it seems no less bizarre talking about the recent fires as an existential threat as it does about foreign sabotage. Not only does the system continue to function, there are no obvious signs of deterioration. In Neso's latest annual transmission review, for instance, so-called loss of supply incidents actually fell in number over the past five years, although the aggregate amount of electricity lost was greater. Typical is the view of Simon Gallagher of UK Networks Services, a consultant: 'The networks are performing better than they ever have.' But for all the upbeat talk, there is also a sense of foreboding. Until now, the network's assets have aged against a backdrop of declining usage, easing the pressure on hard-pressed substations. Britons consumed just 318 terawatt hours of electricity last year; 23 per cent less than the peak year of 2005. Now, as Keir Starmer's administration presses on towards net zero, usage should start shooting up again as sectors like motor transport and domestic heating shift from fossil fuels to electricity. Other power-hungry applications such as AI are coming too. By 2030, Neso anticipates demand will have grown by almost a third to 411 terawatt hours. The increment to supply that will be needed will come from renewables, such as wind and solar. These create other concerns, such as 'dirty power' – a phenomenon linked to intermittent renewable generation sources where, instead of operating at a stable 50 hertz, the power supply's frequency jumps around and becomes irregular. 'There is no escaping the fact that dirty power imposes a far greater burden on network equipment like transformers,' says one electricity expert. There are also concerns about demand spikes from electric vehicle charging putting old transformers, switchgear and cables under heavy strain. But the biggest worry is that an avalanche of equipment failures will expose the near impossibility of replacing old and broken kit. Years of thin orders have long killed off firms like Hackbridge and Hewittic, which built the transformers that burnt in the North Hyde fire. Now, despite a chronic shortage of such equipment, the few survivors have been slow to ramp up production, and Britain is years away from developing solid state transformers that are necessary, in the opinion of Martin Kuball, professor of physics at Bristol university, to create a grid that is safer and more resilient. The UK has just one plant making old style units – GE Vernova – based in Stafford. The average delivery time for a step-up transformer is currently around 200 weeks in the US. And that's before you get to the structural problem of finding the time slots and engineers to install the new equipment you might need. Given the need to keep power always running, access to the transmission and distribution networks is tightly controlled. So restricted are 'system access slots', during which the grid operator permits owners to take substations offline for maintenance and upgrades, and so sparse the ranks of highly skilled engineers to oversee them, that observers wonder how the network could ever deal with a bulge in maintenance – given all the upgrades that net zero will require. Could the recent transformer fires be an advance warning of a wider wave of failure? No one knows. 'It's hard to tell when equipment like this is going to start failing,' says Tim Stone, an infrastructure and energy expert. 'What I fear is that it could resemble Ernest Hemingway's description of going bankrupt in the way it happens – first slowly then suddenly.'