I opened my seatbelt and got out of there – British survivor of Air India plane crash gives his shocking account of the disaster

The sole survivor of yesterday’s deadly Air India plane crash has shared his shocking account of the disaster before it exploded into a huge fireball. 

Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, miraculously survived the plane disaster that had 242 passengers and crew on board.

Mr Ramesh, who lives in London with his wife and child, is being treated at a hospital in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad, where he told doctors that immediately after the plane took off, it began descending and suddenly split in two, ejecting him before there was a loud explosion.

Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who examined Mr. Ramesh, told the Associated Press that he was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body’ but that he ‘seems to be out of danger.’ 

Speaking to Indian broadcaster Doordarshan, Mr Ramesh said: ‘I don’t know how I came out of it alive. For a while, I thought I was about to die. But when I opened my eyes, I saw I was alive. And I opened my seatbelt and got out of there,’ adding how two cabin crew members ‘died before my eyes.’

His seat was placed right next to the emergency door, which he says came off when the plane hit the ground. 

Mr. Ramesh recalled how the pilots tried to raise the jet, but it ‘went full speed and crashed into the building’. 

Footage taken near the crash site yesterday showed Mr Ramesh with visible injuries walking away from the jet before he was rushed to hospital for treatment. 

Mr Ramesh, whose brother was also on the flight and is presumed dead, described yesterday how he heard a ‘a loud noise’ before the plane crashed. 

‘When I got up, there were bodies all around me. 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.’