The only survivor of Air India Flight 171 sat in seat 11A

On 12 June 2025, Air India Flight 171 crashed thirty seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad for London. Of the 242 people on board, one survived: Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British man of Indian origin, who was sitting in seat 11A, by the emergency exit just ahead of the left wing. He unbuckled his belt and walked out through the gap left when the emergency exit next to him broke open.

For a week, “11A” was in the headlines in every language. For once the number stood for something as plain and heavy as one life.

A small footnote the papers found soon after: a Thai singer, Ruangsak Loychusak, had also sat in seat 11A when he survived the crash of Thai Airways Flight 261 on 11 December 1998, though there he was one of 45 people who lived.