Following the crash of Air India’s flight AI171 less than a minute into its journey from Ahmedabad to London on 10 June 2025, the story of the incident’s lone survivor has captured worldwide attention. Investigators continue to look into what prevented the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner from gaining altitude, eventually causing it to smash into a nearby college building, but explanations are emerging about how British man Vishwash Kumar Ramesh managed to make it out of the wreck that killed all his fellow travellers.
Vishwash had been allocated seat 11A, where he was still strapped in for departure when the plane came down. He has described opening his eyes after the impact to see a hole in the fuselage, through which he escaped before the aircraft was engulfed in flames. Apart from his quick thinking and action, it is this seat in particular that is thought to have saved his life.
Seat 11A was positioned immediately adjacent to Exit 2 in an emergency aisle. Although it is not clear if Vishwash used the door or a break in the body of the plane, not only did he have an escape route close at hand, but he had more room in front of his seat than other passengers did, making him less likely to be crushed and giving him more room to manoeuvre out of his seat.
The passenger in seat 11A survived the Air India crash. pic.twitter.com/deyiVTALlF
— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) June 12, 2025
The seat was also in a part of the plane that is stronger than other areas as it is protected by the front edge of the wing, where additional structural elements mean more force is required to compress the aircraft’s bodywork.
🚨 Ramesh Vishwas Kumar, seated on 11A is the sole survivor of the crash. Miracle 🙏 pic.twitter.com/2WpOLRP94I
— Indian Tech & Infra (@IndianTechGuide) June 12, 2025
The Guardian has reported research by Professor Ed Galea, a fire safety and evacuation expert at the University of Greenwich, which found that passengers seated in the five rows nearest aircraft exits are more likely to survive crashes than others. The academic always tries to book seats within those five rows, he explained – something that other flyers around the world are now likely to do.
The seat is also likely to become even more legendary given that Galea’s theory appears to be backed up in a social media post picked up by The Telegraph: the tale of another flyer, James Ruangsak Loychusak, who survived a Thai Airways plane crash in 1998. Flight TG261 from Bangkok was meant to land at Surat Thani airport on 11 December when the Airbus A310-204 stalled and entered a swamp, resulting in the deaths of 101 of the 146 people on board.
Remarkably, not only was actor and musician Loychusak seated within five rows of the exit, but he was in the exact same seat number as Vishwash – seat 11A.
