The pilot of the doomed Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad made a heart-wrenching promise to his father just days before the disaster.
Captain Sumeer Sabharwal - who had over 8,200 hours of flight experience - was piloting the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick.
Flight AI171 departed Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 1:38PM local time. But just moments into the journey, Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunder issued a mayday call.
The aircraft had only reached an altitude of 625 feet before it suddenly lost power and plummeted into a hostel building at BJ Medical College in Meghani Nagar.
The crash claimed the lives of 241 out of the 242 people on board. The sole survivor was a British passenger seated in 11A. Dozens more fatalities occurred on the ground, with others left in a critical condition, per Sky News.
The pilot's desperate final words were uncovered after one of the aircraft’s two black boxes was recovered.
"Mayday... no thrust, losing power, unable to lift,” he reportedly said as he and his co-pilot fought to keep the aircraft aloft, according to the London Evening Standard.
In a heartbreaking detail, Indian politician Dilip Nana Lande also shared that just a week before the crash, Sabharwal had spoken to his 82-year-old father, a former official with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, and made a touching promise.
“A few days ago, he promised to take a break to spend time with his father," Lande revealed, per the Times of India.
Authorities say the plane carried 169 Indian nationals, 53 British citizens, seven Portuguese nationals, and one Canadian.
The survivor, 40-year-old British passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, had been sitting in seat 11A next to an emergency exit.
Ramesh described the chaos to local media from his hospital bed: “Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise, and then we crashed. It all happened so fast...When I stood up, there were bodies everywhere. I just ran.”
“I don’t believe how I survived,” he continued. “For some time, I thought I was also going to die. But when I opened my eyes, I realised I was alive and I tried to unbuckle myself from the seat and escape from where I could.”
He continued: “The side of the plane I was in landed on the ground, and I could see that there was space outside the aircraft. So when my door broke, I tried to escape through it- and I did.”
Aviation expert Guy Leitch told GB News that seat 11A likely saved Ramesh’s life: “My take on it is, the seat 11A was thrown clear of the wreckage as it actually broke up. I think that’s the only way he survived the fireball. He had to have been away from it.”
Leitch explained that the Boeing 787 has a unique breakup structure, and Ramesh’s location near the exit may have allowed him to escape through a gap once the door was dislodged.
“The opposite side of the plane was blocked by a building wall,” Ramesh said, noting that anyone seated on that side “could not have got out".
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site and expressed his grief: “The loss of so many lives in such a sudden and heartbreaking manner is beyond words. Condolences to all the bereaved families. We understand their pain and also know that the void left behind will be felt for years to come. Om Shanti.”
Our thoughts go out to every person impacted by this tragedy.