The curious case of seat no 11A: The chilling coincidence connecting two plane crash survivors, 27 years apart

On 12th June, Air India’s London-bound flight tragically crashed within a few minutes of take-off from Ahmedabad International Airport. Out of 242 onboard, including crew members, 241 died in the crash. The sole survivor, 40-year-old British Indian man Viswash Kumar Ramesh, walked away with some injuries. Ramesh was seated on seat 11A.

Around 4,800 KM away in Thailand, when actor and singer James Ruangsak Loychusak read about Ramesh surviving the air crash, he was shocked to learn the seat number. Coincidentally, in 1998, Loychusak was one of the survivors of the deadly Thai Airways flight TG261 crash. The plane crashed while attempting a landing in the southern Thai city of Surat Thani. The flight had taken off from Bangkok. During landing, it stalled mid-air and crashed. There were 146 people onboard, out of which 101 were killed. Loychusak was sitting on 11A and survived.

The 47-year-old actor-singer took to Facebook and wrote, “Survivor of a plane crash in India. He sat in the same seat as me. 11A.”

While this is a coincidence that brought back horrifying memories for Loychusak, both crashes were far apart from each other. There were 45 survivors in the 27-year-old crash, while in Air India’s recent crash, there was only one survivor. Furthermore, the two aircraft were different. The Thai Airways flight was an Airbus A310, while Air India flight AI-171 was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. The design, layout, and seat positioning of 11A are also different on the two aircraft.

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