Miracle survivor of Air India plane crash and other rare solo escapes from air disasters

The Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday killed everyone on board except one person.

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh walked away from the tragedy in a bloodstained shirt, becoming the ‘miraculous’ sole survivor of the ill-fated flight.

The Boeing 787-8, heading to London, went down soon after leaving Ahmedabad on Thursday. A total of 241 people were killed.

Read Ahmedabad Plane Crash Live Updates  here.

According to the airline, there were 230 passengers: 169 were from India, 53 from the UK, seven from Portugal, and one from Canada. Along with them were two pilots and 10 crew members.

ALSO READ | Ahmedabad plane crash: What brought down the London-bound Air India plane in 30 seconds?

It is worth noting that, over the years, some air crashes have had just one or two people survive.

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In this piece, we take a look at a few such plane crashes from around the world where only one person survived. We will also touch upon the 1988 Ahmedabad crash involving Indian Airlines Flight 113.

Let’s take a look at some of them:

Air India plane crash: How Vishwash Kumar Ramesh survived

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British citizen, was the only person to survive the crash.

He was pulled out from seat 11A and is now being treated at Civil Hospital in Asarwa, as per Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik.

“There were bodies all around me, there were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance," he told News18.

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Recalling what happened in the moments after takeoff, Vishwash said, “Within 30 seconds, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly."

On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited him in the hospital. Ramesh, who is of Indian origin, was flying back to the UK with his brother Ajay Kumar Rakesh.

VIDEO | Ahmedabad Plane Crash: PM Modi meets Vishwaskumar Ramesh, the lone survivor who was onboard the ill-fated Air India flight AI-171, at the Civil Hospital.

Vishwaskumar Ramesh was in '11A' seat of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which was carrying 242 passengers and crew. He was… pic.twitter.com/qEuf9mhGFb

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) June 13, 2025

List of sole survivors in plane crashes across the world: A brief look

1. Bahia Bakari

In June 2009, 12-year-old Bahia Bakari survived after Yemenia Flight 626 went down near the coast of Comoros, a country in southern Africa. She drifted in the Indian Ocean for hours without a life jacket and had little ability to swim.

Today in 2009 Yemenia Flight 626, an Airbus A310-300, crashes into the Indian Ocean near Comoros, killing 152 of the 153 people on board. A 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari survives the crash pic.twitter.com/mrnDDbJ5Ys

— the painter flynn (@thepainterflynn) June 30, 2024

2. Mohammed el-Fateh Osman

Osman was only three when he lived through the crash of Sudan Airways flight SD39 in 2003.

The Boeing 737, with 115 people on board, had taken off from Port Sudan and was headed for Khartoum. Osman was the only one found alive, discovered near a tree by a worker.

3. Vesna Vulovic

She was working as a flight attendant when JAT Flight 367 exploded in the air in 1972. Vesna survived the fall from over 33,000 feet without a parachute, a record noted by Guinness World Records. She passed away in December 2016.

4. Cecelia Cichan

At just four years old, Cecelia was the only one to survive the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in Michigan in August 1987. She was found under the wreckage and needed treatment for serious burns and broken bones.

Her parents, brother, and 151 others on board were killed, along with two people on the ground, according to the FAA.

5. Juliane Koepcke

Juliane, who was 17 at the time, survived when LANSA Flight 508 was struck by lightning and broke apart over Peru’s Lima. She spent 11 days walking through the jungle before she was rescued.

6. Youcef Djillali

On 6 March 2003, Air Algérie Flight 6289 had trouble with its left engine just after take-off from a city in the Sahara. The plane, which had 97 passengers and six crew on board, crashed and caught fire.

Everyone on the aircraft died, except 28-year-old Algerian soldier Youcef Djillali, who had been sitting in the last row.

ALSO READ |  A Manipuri airhostess, a Kerala nurse… The victims of the Ahmedabad plane crash

How 2 people survived Indian Airlines flight’s crash in 1988

The recent Air India Boeing 787 crash has reminded many of the Indian Airlines Flight 113 accident that took place in 1988, as the aircraft was preparing to land at Ahmedabad Airport (AMD).

As per reports, the Boeing 737-200 (VT-EAH), which had taken off from Mumbai, crashed while trying to land in low visibility. It struck trees and a high-tension pole around 2.5 km from runway 23.

Out of the 135 people on board, 133 lost their lives in the crash.

One of the two survivors was Ashok Agarwal, a textile businessman. He lost his 22-year-old wife and their 11-month-old daughter, Ruhi, in the accident.

In 2020, Agarwal was found dead at his home in Prahladnagar, Ahmedabad. A police officer later confirmed that the postmortem showed he had died of a cardiac arrest.

The second survivor was Vinod Rewa Shankar Tripathi.

The crash happened on 19 October 1988. Among the 135 on board, 129 were passengers and six were part of the crew.

Investigators later said the crash was a case of controlled flight into terrain caused by errors made by both the pilot and air traffic control in foggy weather.