A tragic Air India crash occurred on June 12, when a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner departing from Ahmedabad to London’s Gatwick Airport crashed into a doctors’ hostel just minutes after takeoff. A mayday call from the cockpit marked “the last signal” before the explosion. Of the 242 on board, 241 died, and several people on the ground were also killed.
Miraculously, one man survived—British passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who was seated in 11A. “When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran,” Ramesh told *Hindustan Times*. His brother, seated elsewhere, did not survive.
Oddly, Thai singer Ruangsak Loychusak had also sat in seat 11A during a deadly 1998 Thai Airways crash. After hearing of Ramesh’s survival, he said: “The lone survivor… was sitting in the same seat number as me, 11A.”
Following this, social media buzzed with fascination over the seat. “Seat 11A just became the most in-demand seat on the plane,” one user posted.
Although 11A is near an emergency exit, experts say the safest seats are typically toward the back. The surge in interest may be more symbolic than based in safety logic.