On Thursday, an India Air plane carrying nearly 300 souls crashed in Ahmedabad, India, just after takeoff. Miraculously, one man somehow survived the crash that is presumed to have killed everyone else on board.
Forty-year-old Ramesh Viswashkumar, a British national who had been in India visiting family, said he survived by jumping out of the exit-row door.
The Air India flight—a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London Gatwick Airport—took off at 1:38 p.m. local time. Video shows the plane ascending, but then quickly losing altitude. In less than a minute, the plane was ablaze, having landed on a youth hostel building near the airport.
“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” Viswashkumar told Hindustan Times.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation told reporters that the pilot issued a "Mayday" call shortly after takeoff but did not receive a reply from air traffic controllers.
"When I got up, there were bodies all around me," Viswashkumar told the Indian media outlet. "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."
He is reportedly being treated for "impact" injuries to his chest, eyes, and feet.
Unfortunately, his brother, Ajay Kumar Ramesh, who was also on the flight, is reported missing.
I'm always cautious with stories like this so soon after a major event, but Viswashkumar showed his boarding pass for his seat in 11A to reporters, lending credibility to his survival story.
Indian officials say 265 bodies have been recovered at the crash scene, along with the black box from the rear of the plane.
Now, investigators must embark on the arduous task of sorting through the wreckage to try to determine the cause of one of the worst plane crashes in Indian history.
My top source when a plane crashes is a guy who goes by the moniker blancolirio. My pilot friends highly recommend him. Unfortunately, he's on a fishing trip with limited internet access at the moment. He posted a preliminary video on YouTube earlier today, explaining what he'd be looking for.
"What I want you to do when you look at these videos is try to figure out a couple of things," he said. "One: Is there high enough resolution video where you can see if the RAT—the ram air turbine—is deployed? Is the RAT deployed? Two: Look at the landing gear sequence. Look at a normal landing gear sequence for a Boeing 787, and then look carefully at this accident sequence. The condition of the landing gear."
"Remember, when the gear retracts on the 787, it starts with the bogies [main landing gear] tilted back... then the inboard doors begin to open, and then the bogies start to tilt forward, and then the gear retracts up into the wing," he explained.
"What is the condition of the bogies and what is the condition of those gear doors?" he asked. "In other words, was the gear retraction sequence initiated and then interrupted, or was the gear never raised in the first place? And secondly, what's the configuration of the aircraft just prior to impact? Are the flaps completely retracted, or are there still some flaps deployed?"
Keep an eye out for his full analysis.