STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
There is a lone survivor after one of the worst aviation accidents in the history of India. An Air India flight bound for London crashed into a medical college shortly after departure on Thursday. At least 249 people were killed, but let's focus on the one who was not. NPR's Diaa Hadid is in Mumbai. Hi, Diaa.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Hi there, Steve.
INSKEEP: This is incredible. You would presume - that's the way I think about it - if this plane goes down, everyone will die with it. That's a reasonable assumption, but in this case, there was one survivor. What was his story?
HADID: It seems almost miraculous, as you say. He was the passenger in seat 11A. And he somehow managed to escape out of the emergency exit after the plane hit the medical college and burst into flames from the - and that happened just moments after it had taken off from the airport in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad. And there was video circulating after the crash where this fellow, who was visibly wounded, dazed and confused, clutching his mobile phone, just walks out of the crash site. Now, we know who he is now. He's 40-year-old British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh (ph). And he's in hospital now, receiving psychiatric care. As for everybody else, authorities are undertaking DNA tests on relatives to identify the bodies. This was an enormous blast.
INSKEEP: And I would imagine that the casualties were not only on the plane, given that it struck buildings.
HADID: That's right. In an unfortunate coincidence, in that medical college, there were students who'd gathered for lunch, and so seven people were killed there, including five medical students. It also killed a 15-year-old who'd delivered lunch to his mum, who was running a tea side - a roadside tea stall nearby.
INSKEEP: So what else is known about people who were on the plane, other than the sole survivor?
HADID: Well, I think what it tells us is a little bit about Ahmedabad, the city that this crash happened in, and the state, Gujarat. There are so many people here who live abroad. It has a huge expatriate population, and you can see that in the stories of the victims. One man on the plane was with his wife and a little girl. They were returning home to England after visiting his parents. Another man was returning home after his father's funeral. It also included an Indian company director, who was on the flight with his wife to visit his sister in London. And we caught up with his colleague Samir Desai.
SAMIR DESAI: It's a tragedy in how fragile life can be. There's no assurity about the next moment, what's going to happen.
INSKEEP: In this case, you have a plane that takes off. There's video. It seems normal. Then it starts losing altitude. Then it hits the ground with an explosion. Any idea why?
HADID: Yeah. Indian investigators are trying to assess the cause, and they're getting help from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and British investigators. But an aviation safety expert, Amit Singh, told us there may have been issues with the aircraft, or even crew, but there's a tendency to hide those problems. He says regulators and operators aren't working well together.
AMIT SINGH: There's a lack of trust, so none of the parties trust each other.
HADID: And another expert told Indian outlet News Minute that this crash, whatever the reason, was likely made worse because there's so much development around airports that shouldn't be there. So when there's a problem, pilots can't safely land. This is Mohan Ranganathan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MOHAN RANGANATHAN: You cannot have garbage dumps. You can't have slaughterhouses. And so many restrictions are there, and that is violated everywhere.
HADID: Now, Indian regulators have not yet responded to those allegations. And the Dreamliner, which was the plane in this flight, has not been involved in an accident like this before.
INSKEEP: OK. Diaa, thanks very much for the update. Unbelievable story. Really appreciate it.
HADID: You're welcome, Steve.
INSKEEP: NPR's Diaa Hadid is in Mumbai.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
