Thai actor and singer Ruangsak Loychusak (also known as James Ruangsak) expressed profound shock after discovering that the sole survivor of the recent Air India flight AI171 crash in Ahmedabad was seated in the exact same spot he occupied during his own miraculous plane crash survival 27 years ago: seat 11A.

Loychusak, 47, took to social media after news broke of British-Indian national Vishwashkumar Ramesh, 40, being the sole survivor among 242 people aboard the Air India plane that crashed on Thursday, June 12, 2025. “Goosebumps. He sat in the same seat number as me – 11A,” Ruangsak posted, expressing both his astonishment and offering condolences to the victims and their families.

Ruangsak himself survived the Thai Airways Airbus A310-300 crash on December 11, 1998, which went down in a rubber plantation in Surat Thani province. That disaster killed 101 people and injured 45, with James Loychusak among the survivors, seated in seat 11A. While he no longer possesses his original boarding pass, he noted that contemporary newspaper reports from the 1998 incident documented his seat number.

Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who treated Ramesh, told the Associated Press that the lone Air India survivor was disoriented and sustained multiple injuries but appeared to be out of danger. Social media users have widely commented on the extraordinary nature of a single survivor from such a major aviation disaster, calling it unreal, remarkable, and a divine intervention.

The rarity of sole survivors has sparked widespread interest online regarding how such instances occur and if there are precedents. Indeed, several others have been the lone survivors of plane crashes in recent decades.

George Lamson Jr., who survived a Galaxy Airlines flight crash in Reno in 1985 at age 17, also reacted to the Ahmedabad news. “There are no right words for moments like this, but I wanted to acknowledge it,” Lamson posted on social media. “These events don’t just make headlines. They leave a lasting echo in the lives of those who’ve lived through something similar.”

Other notable sole survivors include Bahia Bakari, who was 12 when she survived a Yemenia Airways crash in 2009, and Jim Polehinke, the co-pilot and lone survivor of a 2006 Comair flight crash in Lexington, Kentucky.

Reflecting on his own “second life” after the 1998 crash, Loychusak described the long-lasting emotional and physical scars. “For 10 years, I had a hard time flying. My breathing would become difficult even when the air was fine,” he shared, adding that the sounds, smells, and even the taste of the swamp water from his crash haunted him for years.

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