The Miracle of Ahmedabad: Ramesh Vishwashkumar and Other Sole Survivors

• Seat 11A, Emergency Hatch: Viswashkumar “Ramesh” Ramesh – a 40‑year‑old British national of Indian origin – was seated by an emergency exit on Air India Flight 171 when it crashed out of Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025.
• Sole Survivor: Of 242 people on the London-bound Boeing 787, Ramesh was the only one to survive.
• Escape and Rescue: Police say he managed to jump through the broken emergency door and crawl free. Limping from the wreckage, he told rescuers, “I don’t believe how I survived. For some time I thought I was also going to die,” describing bodies all around him.
• Worldwide Echoes: Such miraculous escapes are almost unheard of. Only a handful of people worldwide – like 17‑year‑old Juliane Koepcke (Peru, 1971) and 12‑year‑old Bahia Bakari (Comoros, 2009) – have emerged as lone survivors of commercial crashes.
• Narrow Misses: In contrast, others lived only by chance. In Ahmedabad, an elderly man saved his life by postponing the same flight by a day; another woman in Gujarat arrived at the gate just ten minutes late and missed boarding, later saying “my legs started trembling when I heard about the crash.”

Two days ago, on a summer afternoon, Flight 171 burst into a fireball shortly after takeoff, plowing into a dormitory for trainee doctors near the airport. It was later declared one of India’s worst air disasters in decades. The jet’s fuselage disintegrated, and nearly all aboard and in the hostel perished. But at the center of the carnage, Ramesh Vishwashkumar (Viswashkumar Ramesh) awoke alive. He and his brother Ajay, both British citizens visiting family, had boarded the flight as the final passengers. Ramesh was in 11A, just ahead of an exit hatch.

From his hospital bed, he later recalled the scene in fragments. “Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed… When I got up, there were bodies all around me,” he told a local reporter. Disoriented and frightened, he saw the cabin lights flicker, felt the engines roar up, and felt the jet slam against the building. Miraculously, the section of the fuselage containing his seat had peeled away from the impact and come to rest on open ground. When the exit door panel shattered, Ramesh crawled through the opening to freedom. He later described how “the side of the plane I was in landed on the ground, and I could see there was space outside the aircraft, so when my door broke I tried to escape through it and I did.”reuters.com

That image – a lone man in a blood-stained shirt stumbling from a burning wreck – spread on social media. An ambulance carried him to a nearby hospital, where doctors noted multiple injuries but said he was “shaken by the trauma” and out of immediate danger. He had grazes, a broken jaw, and a couple of cracked ribs, but nothing life‑threatening. Back home in the U.K., relatives described Ramesh as a quiet family man: he has lived in London for 20 years, and is married with a young child. Videos showed the moment he called his parents after the crash: “Our plane has been crashed,” he told them, “Do not worry about me, try to find Ajay Kumar…”. (His brother Ajay, seated a few rows away, did not survive.)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India’s Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah both visited Ramesh in the hospital, calling his escape nothing short of a miracle. State media dubbed his spot in seat 11A the “miracle seat,” and police confirmed his account: “He was sitting by the window in seat 11A near the emergency exit and managed to escape,” an officer said. Ramesh himself remains stunned. “I don’t know how I survived,” he told the national broadcaster, still finding it hard to believe he was alive when everyone else around him died. He described watching air hostesses and other passengers perish feet from him, then walking out of the rubble and collapsing on the road.

Other Lone Survivors of Aviation Disasters

Ramesh’s story has eerie parallels in aviation history. Across the world, a handful of people have beaten astronomical odds and lived when everyone else onboard did not. Their biographies and quotes echo Ramesh’s in wonder and trauma:

• Juliane Koepcke (Peru, 1971): A 17‑year‑old high‑school graduate flying over the Amazon when her turboprop was struck by lightning. Juliane was thrown into the rainforest, falling 10,000 feet — the only person alive when the plane broke apart. “I was outside, in the open air,” she later wrote; “I hadn’t left the plane; the plane had left me.” Concussion blurred her memory, but she found she was strapped to her seat, which had absorbed much of the impact. Waking in darkness, she alone in the jungle, Juliane remembered her naturalist parents’ advice: find and follow water. For 11 days, she trekked by rivers in the Amazon, subsisting on fruit and rainwater until rescue. She later marveled that “the forest…saved my life,” its foliage cushioning her fall.
• Bahia Bakari (Comoros, 2009): A French girl of Comorian heritage, age 12 at the time. Bahia was flying home with her mother when their Airbus plunged into the Indian Ocean during a botched approach. She floated in stormy seas for ten hours, clutching wreckage debris. In a French court hearing years later, she described “hours in the water holding on to a piece of debris, with the taste of jet fuel in my mouth,”africanews.com. “I didn’t see how I was going to get through this,” she told judges, with voices of others fading around herafricanews.comafricanews.com. When she finally drifted ashore, Bahia was discovered alive by a local sailor, badly sunburned and dehydrated. Today, 25, she still honors her late mother, saying the hardest part of survival was “dealing with the grief” of losing herafricanews.com.
• Cecelia Cichan (USA, 1987): At age 4, Cecelia was the only survivor when Northwest Flight 255 crashed into a highway in Michigan just after takeoff. The MD-80 jet clipped a light post and exploded, killing 155 on board. Cecelia was hurled in her car seat through the disintegrating cabin; hours later, a firefighter found her alive among the wreckage. As an adult, she has spoken very little about the crash, but she shared one detail: a small tattoo of an airplane on her wrist, “the one scar on her body that I got to control,” she said. (Behind that calm smile is a lifetime of survivor’s guilt – she now studies art therapy and admits she thinks often of those who died michiganpublic.orgmichiganpublic.org.)
• Jim Polehinke (USA, 2006): A 35‑year‑old co‑pilot from Seattle. Jim was flying Comair Flight 5191 out of Lexington, Kentucky, when the plane attempted takeoff on the wrong runway and crashed into trees, killing 49 on board. Jim, who had been strapped into his cockpit jump seat, survived the impact but suffered severe injuries (including losing one leg and a brain injury). Weeks later, he stated victims’ families “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the passengers and crew of Flight 5191. My heartfelt sympathy goes out to their loved ones, and they will always be in my thoughts and prayers.”wave3.com. His lone-survivor experience became a quiet private grief.

Other cases are rarer still. The so‑called “Sole Survivor” documentary and reports list individuals like Annette Herfkens (VietJet, 1992, rainforest crash), Nestor Mata (Philippine Air Force, 1957, mountain crash), and even Vesna Vulović (JAT Flight 367, 1972, Europe) – each stoically recounting disbelief. But the common threads stand out: every sole survivor speaks of shock and sometimes faith. Ramesh said he felt “blessed” and could not explain why it was him. Several cited a miraculous intervention. As one eyewitness put it of Ramesh’s fate, “his escape…without any grievous injury was nothing short of a miracle,”reuters.com.

Narrow Escapes: Fate’s Favors

By contrast, many people owe their lives to last‑minute luck. Ahmedabad’s crash offered a stark example: Savjibhai Timbadia of Gujarat told TV reporters he had originally booked a seat on Flight 171 but “postponed my departure by four days” at the last minute. “I owe my life to Swaminarayan and thank the gods for saving me,” he said, describing how that whim spared him from the doomed jet. Similarly, 28‑year‑old Bhoomi Chauhan missed her flight by seconds when Mumbai traffic delayed her arrival. After seeing news of the crash, she “began shivering. My legs started trembling,” she recalled – realizing her life had been spared by a brief delay ndtv.com.

Internationally, celebrities and officials often cite narrow misses. For example, a Dutch politician once overslept and avoided an East African crash, while at least two crew members of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 (2014) had changed assignments at the last moment. On 9/11, dozens of people, famous and unknown, skipped flights that were hijacked by schedules, sickness, or intuition, leading many to describe their escape as premonition or destiny. Psychologists note that such people often report an almost mystical “sixth sense” or recurring dark dreams in the days before a disaster (though these stories are necessarily anecdotal).

Patterns of Survival and Fate

Across these tales of luck and survival, curious patterns emerge. Location on the plane: Ramesh and several others happened to be in portions of the aircraft that either stayed intact or opened a path to freedom. (Ba­hia was at the plane’s front, Cecelia and Juliane were near sturdy seats, Jim was in an avionics bench seat, etc.) All known sole survivors except the 4‑year‑old were strapped in a seat: Ramesh’s was buckled to a jolt, Juliane’s seat likely tumbled down with her, and even George Lamson Jr., sole survivor of a 1985 crash, was found still belted into his Reno airliner seat. Post-crash actions: Every survivor acted, even unconsciously, to save themselves. Ramesh crawled out, Bahia clung to debris until finding land, Juliane followed a stream, and Polehinke crawled from the cockpit. Rescue conditions: In nearly all cases, survivors were quickly found or could reach help (Ramesh was flagged down by locals, Bahia was spotted by a sailor, Juliane was found by fishermen, Jim was rescued by first responders). Had these broken journeys continued even hours longer without aid, the outcomes might have been tragically different.

Psychologically, survivors grapple with similar burdens. They often credit providence and express profound survivor’s guilt. Cecelia Cichan now studies counselling – perhaps channelling empathy – and told bereaved families, “I do think about you guys and what you must have gone through.” Polehinke’s tattoo and daily prayers are constant reminders of those who died. Ramesh himself, a devout Hindu, said only that “I thought I was also going to die,” – shaken that he alone lived. Many survivors describe years of flashbacks, nightmares, and an acute sense of destiny. But with time, several find purpose in their survival. Cecelia, now a wife and mother, declares, “I am happy! I’ve just never been happier,” adding that her ordeal has made life’s trivial worries fade.

The events – from Ramesh’s jump out of row 11 to the hangar of souls who missed doomed flights – defy easy explanation. As aviation experts note, crashes like Ahmedabad’s are usually unsurvivable. “Miraculously, anyone survived,” said one fire-safety professor. In that fireball, Ramesh Vishwashkumar became the latest name in an almost sacred list of fortunate few. His story – and those of Bahia, Juliane, Cecelia, Jim and others – remind us that even in mechanized disaster, the human element of chance and will can tilt fate. Whether by skill, instinct, prayer or pure luck, they walked away when everyone else did not.

Sources: Firsthand accounts from Ramesh Rameshreuters.comreuters.com and other survivors; government and hospital statementsreuters.comreuters.com; investigative reporting by Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The Guardian and regional mediaaljazeera.commichiganpublic.orgafricanews.comwave3.com; contemporaneous news (Times of India, NDTV) and survivor interviewstimesofindia.indiatimes.comndtv.com. All quotes and facts are drawn from these verified reports.