The sole survivor of the Air India plane crash that killed more than 240 people somehow walked from the wreckage of the aircraft after it crashed in the city of Ahmedabad.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was in seat 11A near the emergency exit, and managed to escape through the broken hatch. He was filmed after Thursday’s disaster limping along the street in a bloodstained T-shirt with bruises on his face.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plummeted seconds after take-off and erupted in a ball of fire, killing everyone else on board.
As extraordinary as it seems, the 40-year-old Briton’s miraculous escape isn’t the first story of a sole air-crash survivor. Dozens of stories have been shared from as far back as 1929, when 34-year-old Lou Foote survived a crash that killed 14 others in Newark, New Jersey.
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But despite their good fortune in narrowly avoiding death, those who experience such lucky escapes often find the aftermath difficult to deal with. More recent survivors, while celebrated in the media, have spoken of lifelong feelings of guilt and sorrow following the incidents that almost killed them.
Here we take a look at six survivor stories.
Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367
When: 26 January 1972
Who: Vesna Vulovic, aged 22
“Whenever I think of the accident, I have a prevailing, grave feeling of guilt for surviving it and I cry.” Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic, the sole survivor of the fateful Yugoslav Airlines flight from Copenhagen to Zagreb, was haunted by these feelings for the rest of her life.
Vulovic’s broken body was found among the wreckage after the aircraft fell into woods near Srbska Kamenice in the former Czechoslovakia, killing 23 passengers and four crew.
Vulovic, who fell 33,300ft without a parachute, was paralysed from the waist down, but after two operations she learned to walk again, just a year after the crash.
Yugoslav officials claimed that separatists from a Croatian fascist movement, the Ustashi, had planted a bomb on the plane, which blew it up in the sky.
But while Vulovic became a Serbian hero, she went on to live a secluded life. Back in 2012, The Independent interviewed her in her dilapidated flat in Belgrade, where she shared the struggles many Serbs were facing in harsh economic conditions.
“I don’t know what to say when people say I was lucky ... life is so hard today,” she said.
She passed away in 2016, more than 40 years after the crash, aged 66.
Northwest Airlines Flight 255
When: 16 August 1987
Who: Cecelia Cichan, aged four
“I remember feeling angry and survivor’s guilt,” said Cecelia Cichan when she looked back on the crash that killed her parents and her brother along with 153 other people. “Why didn’t my brother survive? Why me?” she told CNN.
Now 41, Cichan, who cannot remember the crash, says she bears a tattoo on her wrist of an aeroplane “as a reminder of where I come from”.
Then aged just four, Cichan was travelling home to Tempe, Arizona, alongside her mother, father and six-year-old brother.
Tragedy stuck when the left wing of the plane clipped a light pole after take-off. The aircraft rolled 90 degrees left and sheared the top off a rental car building before crashing into a busy road, where it went up in flames.
Firefighters discovered Cichan still strapped into her seat among the wreckage. She sustained third-degree burns and fractures to her skull, collarbone and left leg.
Lansa Flight 508
When: 24 December 1971
Who: Juliane Koepcke, aged 17
When Juliane Koepcke and her mother Maria boarded Lansa Flight 508 from Lima to Pucallpa in Peru, they were angry at the flight already being seven hours late.
Nevertheless, they were looking forward to reuniting with Juliane’s father for the Christmas holidays.
But the aircraft was hit by lightning mid-air, causing a fire on the right wing, which then detached. As the plane dived down into the Peruvian rainforest, Juliane found herself outside the aircraft in a freefall, dropping 10,000ft while still strapped to her seat.
She fell unconscious before waking up the next day with a broken collarbone and cuts to her legs. Fourteen other people, of the 92 on board, survived the crash but died while awaiting rescue. Among them was her mother.
Juliane later told the BBC: “I found out that she [Maria Koepcke] also survived the crash but was badly injured and she couldn’t move. She died several days later. I dread to think what her last days were like.”
Yemenia Flight 626
When: 30 June 2009
Who: Bahia Bakari, aged 12
Young Bahia Bakari could hardly swim, said her father. But she managed to cling on to aeroplane wreckage in the sea for 13 hours before rescue after an Airbus A310-324 crashed off the north coast of Grande Comore, Comoros in 2009. The plane had taken off from Sana’a in Yemen and came down at around 1.50am on approach to its destination.
French aviation investigators found that errors by the crew had brought the plane into a stall over the sea. Factors cited were a lack of training and windy conditions.
On board the flight were 153 people, including 66 French nationals and Bahia’s mother.
Yet Bahia said it had not prevented her from flying again. “I tell myself there’s little chance it will happen to me a second time,” she told France 3.
Describing the crash, she said: “We were told that we were going to land and there were jolts in the plane. No one seemed worried. Before the crash, my mother just said to me, ‘Did you fasten your seatbelt?’”
Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771
When: 12 May 2010
Who: Ruben van Assouw, aged nine
One of the youngest sole survivors of a plane crash, Ruben van Assouw, was returning from a safari holiday with his family in South Africa when their Airbus A330-200 crashed.
The plane, which was heading from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Tripoli, Libya, came down just short of the stopover airport runway in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Van Assouw suffered leg fractures, but remained in a stable condition despite the aircraft hitting the ground with such force that smouldering shards of metal were thrown half a mile from the point of impact.
He was discovered some way from the crashed aircraft, semi-conscious and still strapped into his aeroplane seat. Ruben lost his parents and his brother in the crash. In total, 103 passengers and crew died, including UK, French and US nationals.
Despite reports that the boy was subsequently looked after by his aunt and uncle, little is known about his life after the crash. Four years ago, a book was published, called Dear Edward, that was partly based on his story.
Global Air Flight 0972
When: 18 May 2018
Who: Mailen Diaz Almaguer, aged 19
Teenager Mailen Diaz Almaguer was on a domestic flight from the Cuban capital Havana with her husband when it crashed shortly after take-off in 2018. Eyewitnesses said they saw one of the plane’s engines on fire before it disappeared behind trees and crashed into a field, according to The New York Times.
Onboard were 105 people, including at last five children, according to reports. The plane had been en route to Holguin, Cuba.
Three passengers were sent to Calixto Garcia Hospital alive, but only Almaguer survived. During 70 days of treatment to save her life, her left leg was amputated.
In the years since, the young woman, who now lives in Havana having bought a home with the compensation she received, has shared updates on her recovery. She has said she relied on her Christian faith to overcome the physical and mental challenges caused by the crash.
