The sole survivor of the Air India Flight AI171 crash in Ahmedabad, which left 265 people dead, has revealed how he miraculously escaped the inferno that followed the disaster.

Viswashkumar Ramesh, a British national, was seated in 11A, next to the emergency door on the left side of the aircraft. He said the plane broke apart shortly after take-off, and his seat was flung clear of the wreckage. As a result, he was shielded from the flames that engulfed the rest of the aircraft.

“The plane broke, and my seat came off,” he told doctors treating him at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital. “That is how I was saved.”

Ramesh told doctors that he did not jump from the plane but was thrown out while still strapped to his seat when the aircraft disintegrated.

“The place where I landed was low… I took off the seat belt and for a moment, I was scared for my life. But I was near ground level, so I tried to get out,” he told DD News.

Seeing the doors of the aircraft were broken, Ramesh said he was able to walk out on foot, even as he saw passengers and crew dying around him.

“I can’t believe how I survived,” Ramesh said. “I thought I would die. People died in front of my eyes.”

A now viral video shows a bruised and bloodied Ramesh limping towards an ambulance as bystanders assail him with questions about the fate of the rest of the people on the flight. At present, he is under observation in the trauma ward.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, bound for London’s Gatwick airport, crashed into a medical college hostel shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Thursday. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members.

The 11-year-old aircraft could be seen from miles away, losing altitude rapidly and combusting in a fiery blaze that sent plumes of thick black smoke spiralling up in the air. The aircraft climbed just about 600-800 feet before plummeting to the ground almost immediately.

Images of the aftermath showed parts of the plane embedded into BJ Medical College, with pieces of its landing gear, fuselage and tail protruding from the building.

The pilot of the twin-engine wide-bodied aircraft issued a ‘Mayday’ distress call, denoting a full emergency, soon after takeoff at 1.39 pm, the Air Traffic Control at Ahmedabad said.

A formal investigation into the incident is underway. The search is also on for the aircraft’s black box — the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder — for clues to understand what happened in the last crucial moments.

According to Air India, of the passengers on board, 169 were Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. The other 12 were two pilots and 10 crew members.

Former Gujarat chief minister and BJP leader Vijay Rupani was among the passengers on the ill-fated flight.