Viswash Kumar Ramesh is the only known survivor of the London-bound Air India flight carrying 242 people that crashed shortly after takeoff in the north-west Indian city of Ahmedabad.
The 40-year-old is one of the 53 British nationals plus 169 Indian nationals, one Canadian and seven Portuguese nationals who were onboard the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as passengers in addition to two pilots and 10 cabin crew.
He had been sitting near an emergency exit, in seat 11A, of the London-bound flight and managed to jump out, Ahmedabad senior police officer Vidhi Chaudhary said.
“Thirty seconds after takeoff there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” Mr Viswash told the Hindustan Times from a general ward in the civil hospital in Asarwa, Ahmedabad.
“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,” he added.
Social media footage shown on Indian news channels showed a man in a bloodstained white T-shirt and dark pants limping on a street and being helped by a medic. The man had bruises on his face and a goatee, resembling photographs of Mr Viswash in hospital after the crash that were published by local media.
The survivor told the Hindustan Times he was returning to the UK, where he has lived for 20 years, with his brother, who was also on the same flight, after visiting family in India.
Dr Dhaval Gameti, who treated Mr Viswash, said: “He was disorientated, with multiple injuries all over his body. But he seems to be out of danger.”
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was engulfed in a huge fireball after crashing into the Meghani Nagar residential area minutes after taking off at 1.38pm local time (09:08 BST) on Thursday.
Images of the aftermath showed parts of the plane embedded into BJ Medical College, with pieces of its landing gear, fuselage and tail protruding from the building.
Mr Ajay Valgi, a cousin of Mr Viswash who lives in Leicester, central England, told the BBC that Mr Viswash spoke by phone to confirm he was all right.
“He only said that he was fine, nothing else,” Mr Valgi said, adding that the family had not heard anything about the brother.
“We’re not doing well. We’re all upset,” he said. Mr Viswash is married and has a son, he added.
London Gatwick Airport said a reception centre was being set up for relatives of passengers.
UK officials are being deployed to India to support the investigation, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch said. Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, said the crash was “devastating”, while the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said it was “heartbreaking beyond words”.
“We are still verifying the number of dead, including those killed in the building where the plane crashed,” Ahmedabad senior police officer Vidhi Chaudhary told Reuters.
At the time of writing, she said the death toll was more than 240, revising down a previous toll of 294 as it included body parts that had been double counted. It was not immediately clear how many of the dead had been on the aircraft or on the ground.
