AHMEDABAD: June 12, 2025. Air India Flight 171 takes off for London Gatwick at 1.38pm on a sunny Thursday with clear visibility. Thirty-two seconds later, disaster strikes. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner carrying 242 people — including two pilots and 10 cabin crew — plunges to earth and crashes 1.7km from Ahmedabad airport. One man lives.For nearly a year, mystery has swirled around how seat 11A flier Viswashkumar Ramesh , a British national of Indian origin, walked away from one of the world’s deadliest aviation tragedies.An internal assessment by Gujarat police has pieced together a chain of survival: seat 11A, a mid-air ejection, a 50ft trajectory away from wreckage and a 10ft mud embankment created by construction and landscaping work. That mud wall shielded him from a raging fireball.Mud insulated Ramesh from heat & blast forceSources familiar with the assessment said that Viswashkumar Ramesh survived because he was hurled out of the aircraft while still strapped to his seat, located beside an emergency exit near a section of fuselage that later split apart on impact.Sources said the rear section of the aircraft slammed into BJ Medical College’s hostel-mess complex after losing altitude shortly after takeoff. When the aircraft broke apart, the force of the impact flung Ramesh and his seat about 50ft from wreckage before landing in a muddy patch, a source said.Seconds later, the forward section crashed into the hostel complex and erupted in flames. By then, Ramesh had landed behind the mud embankment, which absorbed much of the heat, flames and blast force unleashed by the explosion, sparing him fatal burns. He escaped with a dislocated shoulder and minor facial injuries and was shifted to Ahmedabad civil hospital.“The mound acted as a shield between him and the aircraft. It protected him from the direct impact of the fireball, heat and flames generated by the explosion,” a source said.Investigators reconstructed the sequence of events using CCTV footage and other evidence gathered from the crash site. They have also obtained a video recorded from the opposite side of the aircraft, offering a fresh perspective on the crash sequence, sources said.Survival, however, came at a crushing cost. Ramesh’s younger brother Ajay, travelling with him, died in the crash. After returning to UK in Sept last year to reunite with his wife and young son, Ramesh continues to battle physical injuries, emotional scars and financial hardship.
