Viswashkumar explained that he and his brother had been staying in India for the last eight or nine months and he was bound back home to London, where his family lived.
Viswashkumar told Reuters in Hindi that within a minute after takeoff, the plane felt like it came to a standstill in the air and the green and white cabin lights turned on.
“I could feel engine thrust increasing to go up but it crashed with speed into the building,” he told Reuters.
He explained that the side of the plane he was on landed on the ground floor of the hostel.
“I could see that there was space outside the aircraft, so when my door broke I tried to escape through a little space and I did. On the opposite side (of plane) was the building wall, so nobody could have escaped. The plane crashed there. There was some space where I landed,” he said.
“I don’t know how I managed to escape. It was in front of my eyes that the air hostess and others (died),” he added.
Viswashkumar’s left hand was burned. An ambulance took him to a hospital where he remains in recovery.
He is “doing well” but “psychologically disturbed” by the event, according to the medical director of the Civil Hospital, where he is being treated.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Viswashkumar in the hospital Friday.
Viswashkumar summed up his extraordinary survival in a few words: “It’s miracle, everything,” he told DD News.
Viswashkumar’s brother in the United Kingdom told Sky News, NBC News’ international partner, that “this is a miracle that he survived.”
“But what other miracle for my other brother?” he said, referring to their third brother who was on the flight with Viswashkumar.
In total, there were 230 passengers and 12 crew members on board, Air India said, and 241 were killed. Among the passengers were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, a Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals.
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