Kozhikode plane crash survivor says Ahmedabad tragedy brings horrendous memories back

Thiruvananthapuram: He is still finding it hard to come to terms with the horrendous memories he had on board a crashed aeroplane around five years ago.

The jerking sounds, screams of children and a call from a fellow passenger from behind to pray to the Almighty were still part of his nightmares, said Ashique, a Keralite man who had a narrow escape in the flight crash that happened at Kozhikode airport in 2020.

The tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad, which killed 241 people on board a London-bound Air India flight on Thursday, brought the horrors of the Kozhikode flight accident back to the minds of people, including Ashique.

"My mind has been deeply disturbed ever since I came to know about the plane crash in Ahmedabad. The TV visuals were really painful. It was like re-living our own experience, which we had years ago," he told a TV channel.

If the Ahmedabad accident happened within seconds after the take-off from the airport, the Kozhikode plane accident occurred soon after the aeroplane had landed on the runway, he said.

An Air India Express flight from Dubai with 190 people, including its six-member crew, overshot the tabletop runway during landing at the Kozhikode airport amid heavy rains on the evening of August 7, 2020.

The narrow-body B737 plane fell into a valley 35 feet below and broke into pieces, killing 21 people, including both pilots.

"The majority of the passengers onboard that ill-fated flight, including me, were already thoroughly disturbed because of the COVID situation. Many of the passengers were on their way back home after losing their jobs because of the pandemic," Ashique recalled.

He said they could not identify even many fellow travellers because of the donning of the masks and the PPE kits.

Everybody was thinking about the quarantine after reaching home, and passengers didn't even dare to use the washroom on board the flight because of the fear of the disease, he said.

So, the relief of seeing the runway was beyond words, he said.

But, after the landing, the flight rose up again and hovered for some time, he said, adding that it again landed in the second attempt.

"Suddenly, a jerking sound was heard. Some children were seen falling from the laps of their mothers. The happenings in the next few seconds were something beyond our imagination," Aashique recalled.

Children were heard screaming around, and someone from behind asked everyone to pray to God.

"We understood something bad had happened. I hugged my brother, who was travelling along with me, tightly. I don't remember anything after that," he said.

The man said that when he opened his eyes, it was raining heavily.

"Luckily, our flight didn't catch fire. The airport area was receiving heavy rains on that fatal day. Forgetting the COVID situation, local people rushed to our rescue and gave us first aid, brought us back to life," he added.

He said that after news of the Ahmedabad tragedy happened, many of the then co-passengers texted messages in their common social media group and reminisced about those memories.

At least 265 people were killed on Thursday when the London-bound Air India plane crashed into a medical college complex in Ahmedabad and burst into a ball of fire less than a minute after takeoff.

The dead in the country's worst air disaster in recent times included several people on the ground.