THE sole survivor of the Air India disaster may never return to the UK as he is too scared to board a plane, his family has revealed.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was the only passenger to walk away from the June crash which killed 260 people.
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His wife Hiral and four-year-old son flew to India – where he is receiving counselling – to help him recuperate, but they have since returned to Britain.
The businessman’s brother-in-law said he is so traumatised that they do not expect him to join them in London or at the family home in Leicester.
He told the Mail on Sunday: “I think he will stay over there because he would be too frightened to get on a plane again.”
Mr Ramesh managed to crawl from his seat, 11A, and escape when the Gatwick-bound Boeing 787 lost power and smashed into a medical hostel seconds after leaving Ahmedabad.
He was taken to hospital where he was treated for cuts to his face and chest injuries.
His brother Ajay, 35, was one of 241 people on board the plane who died.
Fifty two of the victims were British. A further 19 people on the ground were killed.
It comes as relatives of passengers whose remains were mixed up or “lost” after the crash say they have been “abandoned” by Indian authorities and the Foreign Office.
The families of Ashok Patel, 74, and his wife Shobhana, 71; and Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, 39, and his husband Jamie, 45, have urged Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to probe what happened in a letter.
They wrote: “Silence and a severe lack of communication force us to bring this to your attention. We feel abandoned.”
An interim report by India’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch in July revealed that the plane’s fuel-control switches were moved to the ‘cut off’ position seconds after take-off – starving the engines.
One of the pilots was heard asking the other why he had cut off the fuel supply on the aircraft’s voice recorder – but he responded that he had not done so.
A US law firm is now claiming that electrical failure following a water leak may have caused the crash, rather than pilot error.
Mike Andrews, of Beasley Allen, claims that just months before the disaster, the US Federal Aviation Administration highlighted reports of water leaks on 787s due to improperly installed waterline couplings and water leaking into the electronics equipment bays.
He said Mr Ramesh had also told how the lights in the cabin had flickered – potentially indicating an electrical issue.
Bereaved families have launched High Court action against Air India to force the release of maintenance records and pilots’ medical and training files.
Boeing was approached for comment.
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India’s dark aviation history
A LONDON-BOUND Air India flight crashed in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on Thursday.
The following are details of some other airline accidents in India in recent decades:
AUGUST 2020
At least 18 people died and 16 were severely injured when an Air India Express Boeing 737 plane skidded off the runway in the southern city of Kozhikode during heavy rain, plunged into a valley and crashed nose-first into the ground.
MAY 2010
An Air India Boeing 737 flight from Dubai overshot the runway at the airport in the southern city of Mangaluru and crashed into a ravine, killing 158 people on board.
JULY 2000
More than 50 people were killed when a state-owned Alliance Air flight between Kolkata and the capital, New Delhi, crashed in a residential area of the eastern city of Patna.
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