The world is calling it a miracle. Vishwashkumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the Air India crash that claimed 241 lives, walked away from a smoldering wreckage that turned a residential neighborhood in Ahmedabad into a disaster zone.
The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed minutes after takeoff, slamming into a medical college hostel in flames and leaving a trail of devastation. Most bodies were charred beyond recognition. Officials expect the death toll to rise as more remains are recovered from the wreckage.
And yet, from this horror, one man emerged alive.
Ramesh, seated near an emergency exit in seat 11A, reportedly escaped through a broken hatch. Footage circulated online—though unverified—showed him limping, bloodied and dazed, on the street before medics led him away.
“I don’t believe how I survived,” Ramesh, 40, told Indian broadcaster DD News from his hospital bed, still processing the loss of his brother in the crash.
Experts call such survivals “extraordinarily rare.” Stephen Wood, a disaster medicine professor at Northeastern University, says these events usually involve “a confluence of rare but explainable factors”—like the impact angle, seat location, and a survivable pocket inside the plane’s fuselage.
Ramesh now joins the ranks of others who defied death in catastrophic crashes, including Juliane Koepcke, Vesna Vulović, and Cecelia Crocker. Each survival story is etched with trauma, resilience, and lasting emotional scars.
As global media christens Ramesh’s escape “The Miracle of Seat 11A,” his survival stands as both a marvel of fate and a grim reminder of how thin the line is between life and death at 30,000 feet.
Swifteradio.com
