First pictures and names of the pilots and cabin crew of the ill-fated Air India plane that crashed just moments after take-off have been released.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of experience, was today named as the pilot of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
First Officer Clive Kunder, from Mumbai, was co-piloting. He had logged 1,100 of flying hours and completed his training at the Florida-based Paris Air Flight School, according to local media.
Cabin crew members Nganthoi Sharma Kongbrailatpam and Lamnunthem Singson were also revealed to have been onboard.
Senior members Shradha Dhavan and Aparna Mahadik, along with Saineeta Chakravarti, Deepak Pathak, Maithili Patil, Irfan Shaikh, Roshni Songhare Rajendra, and Manisha Thapa were also named among the crew.
British father Vishwash Kumar Ramesh is thought to be the lone survivor of the plane disaster, which is believed to have claimed the lives of hundreds of people in India.
The 40-year-old spoke from the safety of a hospital bed after escaping from the fallen Flight 171 this morning.
The passenger, who was in seat 11A when the plane came down in a residential area, recalled: ‘Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.’
‘When I got up, there were bodies all around me,’ he told local media. ‘I was scared. I stood up and ran.
‘There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.’
.The plane had been carrying 242 passengers, including 53 Britons. Those on board also included 159 Indian nationals, seven Portuguese and a Canadian. Eleven of those on board were children, including two newborns.
