The notion that only one person survived the Air India plane crash that killed 241 people on board Thursday is sparking interest on social media about how that could happen and if such a thing has happened before.
A medic has said Vishwashkumar Ramesh was thrown out of the plane and walked to a nearby ambulance for aid. Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who treated Ramesh, told The Associated Press that Ramesh was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body, but that he seemed to be out of danger.
People on social media have been commenting about the idea of only one person surviving the crash, calling it unreal, remarkable, a work of divine intervention, and a miracle.
In recent decades, several other people have been the lone survivors of plane crashes.
Cecelia Crocker — known as Cecelia Cichan at the time of the 1987 crash — was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 255 when it crashed in the Detroit suburb of Romulus, killing 154 people on board, including her parents and brother. Two people also died on the ground.
The Phoenix-bound plane was clearing the runway when it tilted and the left wing clipped a light pole before shearing the top off a rental car building. The McDonnell Douglas MD80 left a half-mile trail of bodies and wreckage along Middle Belt Road.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the plane’s crew failed to set the wing flaps properly for takeoff. The agency also said a cockpit warning system did not alert the crew to the problem.
Cichan said in a 2013 documentary that she thought about the crash every day and that she had scars on her arms, legs and forehead. She had also gotten an airplane tattoo on her wrist.
“I got this tattoo as a reminder of where I’ve come from. I see it as — so many scars were put on my body against my will — and I decided to put this on my body for myself,” she said in the film.
At least three other people have been “sole survivors” of plane crashes.
George Lamson Jr., then a 17-year-old from Plymouth, Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985.
Lamson in a social media post Thursday said the news of a plane crash in India with only one survivor shook him.
“There are no right words for moments like this, but I wanted to acknowledge it,” he said. “These events don’t just make headlines. They leave a lasting echo in the lives of those who’ve lived through something similar.”
Bahia Bakari, then 12, lived through a Yemenia Airways flight that crashed near the Comoro Islands in 2009.
Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky.