'Two miraculous escapes'; 11A seat becomes talk of town

NEW DELHI: Two fatal plane crashes and just two survivors. A spec of astonishment is reserved for the story. The survivors of the two flight accidents happened 27 years apart, shared the same seat number— 11A.

The striking coincidence surfaced when Thai actor and singer Ruangsak Loychusak revealed his survival story while responding to the Air India disaster.

All prominent news channels jumped to the conclusion that no person made it out alive from the devastating crash. At the same time of the news report, Indian-origin British citizen Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, was walking through the roads near the accident site with bruises across his face. Just moments before, he was inside the Air India flight that nosedived into a hostel.

The miracle escape soon became news and what caught everyone's eye was Vishwas’s seat number— 11A. This is a window seat right in front of the wings.

On December 11, 1998, a plane crash occurred in southern Thailand. Thai Airways Flight TG 261 crashed into a swamp while attempting to land. 101 of the 146 people on board the plane tragically died. Ruangsak was 20 years old at the time and was seated on 11A. Miraculously he came out alive of the tragedy.

Ruangsak felt a kind of numbness when Vishwas’s story became viral. He shared this news on Facebook and in no time many connected the parallels between the two incidents and were left appalled. Ruangsak rarely mentions the incident for fear of the trauma returning. For a decade after the incident, Ruangsak did not fly.