The man who walked away from the Air India plane crash as the disaster’s only survivor was sitting near an emergency exit on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner as it took off from Ahmedabad, India, on its way to London on Thursday. His seat was 11A.
The seat is on the left side of the aircraft when facing the cockpit. The man, 40-year-old British national Viswash Kumar Ramesh, said the plane crash-landed on the ground floor of a building where medical students lived. Ramesh said he opened his eyes, realizing he was alive, and unfastened his seat belt before forcing himself out of the aircraft — escaping with a burnt hand.
“I could see there was space outside the aircraft, so when my door broke I tried to escape through a little space and I did,” he said from his hospital bed.
An infographic shows where Ramesh was seated. The image shows seat 11A was near the front of the plane, with some open space right in front of it.
Nicholas Shearman/AFP/Getty Images
Ron Bartsch, chairman at the Sydney-based AvLaw Aviation Consulting, told the Reuters news agency that seat 11A “was obviously the safest seat” in this particular instance because Ramesh was sitting adjacent to the emergency exit.
“But it’s not always 11A, it’s just 11A on this configuration of the Boeing 787,” Bartsch said.
Seat configurations vary depending on the aircraft, and many factors are at play when it comes to crash survival.
“Each accident is different, and it is impossible to predict survivability based on seat location,” said Mitchell Fox, a director at the U.S.-based nonprofit Flight Safety Foundation, according to Reuters.
Ramesh was in shock as he walked away from the crash. He was later taken to a hospital in an ambulance.
Dr. Dhaval Gameti at Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital told The Associated Press that Ramesh “was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body” but that he seemed to be “out of danger.”
Indian Ministry of Home Affairs/AP 
contributed to this report.