A British father who was due to be on board the doomed Air India plane that crashed last week is ‘grateful’ for his life after deciding to change flights at the last minute, revealing he was placed in the same Seat 11A as the sole survivor of the tragedy.
Owen Jackson, 31, from Saffron Walden in Essex, had been in India for work and was expecting to come home on Thursday.
But tied up at work, his colleagues suggested he take a flight back on Saturday instead.
On Thursday morning, Flight AI171 crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, leaving just one survivor from 242 on board, including 53 Britons.
Owen had not told his family on which day he was set to fly, and was in meetings – not checking his phone – as his wife learned of the tragedy.
He had coincidentally been booked on to Seat 11A on the Saturday flight – the same lucky seat number that sole survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh had been sitting in on Flight AI171 when it crashed.
‘It’s a shock,’ Owen told The Sun. ‘I’m more grateful than anything else – it is such a weird coincidence.’
‘You hear it every now and again about planes going down and you don’t really think much of it, but when it’s the actual aircraft you’re potentially getting on two days later, it does make you think.’
Owen Jackson, 31, from Saffron Walden in Essex, was due to come home on Thursday but delayed until Saturday due to work
On Thursday morning, Flight AI171 crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad Airport in Gujarat, leaving just one survivor from 242 on board, including 53 Britons
A video posted to social media appeared to show the plane descending in a controlled manner with a high nose angle and landing gear deployed
Astonishing footage showed Vishwash Kumar Ramesh walking away from the scene
Owen’s wife, Phillipa, 30, was unaware of her husband’s fate for hours as he had not told her that he had changed his plans.
Owen said he was probably one of the last people to find out about the crash, not looking at his phone for some two hours after it happened.
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Phillipa, a teacher, told The Sun that she was working at the time and ‘just trying to not let [the children] see or know what I was feeling’ as she waited for news from Owen.
‘I still feel affected by it now, to be honest with you, for days,’ she said. ‘I was just bursting into tears randomly.
‘The way we felt is nothing compared to how the victims and their families are actually feeling, my heart really goes out to them, it’s just awful.’
British father Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was identified last week as the sole survivor of Thursday’s crash.
Incredibly, the passenger of Seat 11A was able to walk away with relatively minor injuries.
Astonishing footage showed him hobbling away from the scene of the crash. He reportedly sustained injuries to his chest, eyes and feet.
Mr Ramesh, from Leicester, was travelling home from seeing family in India when the plane crashed, hitting buildings housing doctors in a residential area near the airport.
Authorities had said earlier that they believed no one had escaped the flight alive.
The lone survivor had been sitting in seat 11A when Flight 171 crashed shortly after takeoff
A crane retrieves part of the fuselage of the Air India Boeing 787 on June 14, 2025
Rescuers work at the site of an airplane that crashed in Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, Thursday, June 12, 2025
Is there such a thing as a “lucky seat” on a plane?YesNo
There were 53 British nationals on board as well as 159 Indian nationals, seven Portuguese citizens and a Canadian.
Eleven of those on board were children, including two newborns.
Indian aviation officials confirmed the final words of the pilot, moments before the plane crashed into buildings near Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, were Mayday distress calls.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of flying experience, desperately cried: ‘Thrust not achieved… falling… Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!’
The jet began losing height moments after take-off and exploded into a fireball after smashing into a hostel on the ground in Gujarat.
Indian authorities have yet to identify the cause of the disaster and have ordered inspections of Air India’s Dreamliners.
Authorities announced Sunday that the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, had been recovered. This may offer investigators more clues about what went wrong.
The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) captures all audio from the cockpit, including pilot conversations, radio transmissions, warning alarms and ambient mechanical sounds.
It will allow investigators to finally understand what happened in the moments leading up to one of the world’s worst aviation disasters in a decade.
Planes usually carry two black boxes – small but tough electronic flight data recorders made with robust materials such as titanium or steel and insulated with fire-resistant materials to withstand extreme conditions during a crash.https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/html_modules/2025/06_JUN/250612_Air_india_Crash/index.html
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) meeting with Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, sole survivor of the Air India flight 171 crash
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh lying in hospital with injuries after surviving the crash
Wreckage of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner lies at the site, showing part of its registration “VT-ANB”, where the Air India plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025
The first black box was recovered on Friday from the rooftop of a building at the site of the crash just 28 hours after the crash by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).
Authorities say it will now be easier to determine the exact cause of the crash with both the CVR and the Flight Data Recorder having been found.
Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said Saturday he hoped decoding the first black box, the flight data recorder, would ‘give an in-depth insight’ into the circumstances of the crash.
Imtiyaz Ali, who was still waiting for a DNA match to find his brother, said the airline should have supported families faster.
‘I’m disappointed in them. It is their duty,’ said Ali, who was contacted by the airline on Saturday.
‘Next step is to find out the reason for this accident. We need to know,’ he told AFP.
Commercial airline pilot Steve Schreiber, who analyses plane crashes and close calls, said he believes the Dreamliner suffered a ‘dual engine failure’, based on new video footage of the plane’s last moments in flight.
Mr Schreiber explained on his Youtube channel Captain Steeeve [sic] that beneath the right wing of the aeroplane, he could see a ‘protrusion on the belly of the aircraft’. Underneath that there is a ‘little grey dot’, he added.
He said this is evidence of the Ram Access Turbine (RAT) deploying on the plane.
‘The purpose is to provide electrical and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft on an extreme emergency.’
The plane crashed in a residential area of Gujarat in India last week, killing hundreds
People look at the debris of an Air India plane crashed in Ahmedabad of India’s Gujarat state
Officials inspect the remains of the Air India passenger plane at the crash site
A view of the site where a plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat on June 12, 2025
Mr Schreiber said that on a 787 there are three things that will deploy the RAT automatically.
He said: ‘A massive electrical failure, a massive hydraulic failure, or a dual engine failure.
‘Any one of those three things will cause that RAT to deploy.’
In pilots’ forums, aviation experts had said on Thursday that it sounded like the plane’s RAT had been deployed shortly before the crash.
