The sole survivor of a fiery plane crash that killed 260 people in western India five months ago is back home in England, but he says his life has been upended by the trauma, leaving him unable to even speak with his family.
Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, slammed into a building in Ahmedabad shortly after taking off on June 13, killing 19 people on the ground and everyone on board the plane — apart from the passenger in seat 11A, Viswash Kumar Ramesh.
Bloodstains on his t-shirt and clutching his phone, Ramesh limped on June 13 from the smoldering wreckage of Flight 171 in total shock. Five months later, he’s still in disbelief.
“It is miracle, isn’t it,” Ramesh, a U.K. national whose native language is Gujarati, told CBS News partner BBC News. “Still, I not believing, I am only one survivor.”
BBC News
His younger brother Ajay was among the 241 people killed on the plane. He had been sitting just a few seats away.
“I’m luckiest man, but also, I lost everything. My brother, for me, I lost my brother.”
Ramesh has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, constantly haunted by the horrors of that day, and he is still suffering with physical injuries, too.
“It is very painful for me to explain that happened, still. I can’t say anything about that now,” he told the BBC. “Now I’m alone. I just sit in my room alone, not talking with my wife, my son. I just like to be alone in my house.”
Raju Shinde/Hindustan Times/Getty 
CBS News was at the crash site in the days following India’s worst aviation disaster, and we pushed Air India officials to address the grieving families.
“Investigations will take time, but anything we can do now, we are doing,” the airline’s CEO Campbell Wilson said right after the crash. “We understand that people are eager for information … For now, our teams are working around the clock to support passengers, crew and their families — as well as investigators — however we can.”
Ramesh’s legal team says Air India has still not provided adequate support or compensation, however. The airline made an interim offer of less than $30,000.
Doordashan/Reuters 
Air India told CBS News in a statement that “support through what must have been an unimaginable period” for Ramesh remains its “absolute priority.”
The airline said it had requested to meet with him and would “continue to reach out, and we very much hope to receive a positive response.”
The cause of the disastrous crash has not been confirmed, but a preliminary report released in July by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said cockpit cutoff switches for fuel supply to both of the Boeing 787’s engines had been switched, one after another, within one second, leading to both engines losing thrust.