A 28-year-old UK-based student, Bhoomi Chauhan, has described her last-minute failure to board the ill-fated Air India Flight AI171 as a miracle that saved her life.
Chauhan, a business administration student living in Bristol, was on holiday in western India and had booked a seat on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner headed to London Gatwick.
The aircraft tragically crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad on Thursday, killing all 253 people on board and at least eight more on the ground.
Chauhan was en route to the airport from Ankleshwar, a city roughly 201 kilometres south of Ahmedabad, but arrived just 10 minutes too late due to heavy traffic congestion.
“We were furious with our driver and left the airport very upset,” she told BBC Gujarati. “I was disappointed and began speaking to my travel agent about a possible refund. Then I got a call informing me the plane had crashed.”
Her digital boarding pass, verified by BBC News, showed she had checked in online and was assigned seat 36G in the economy section. However, by the time she reached the airport at 12:20 p.m., boarding had already closed.
“I begged the airline staff to let me board. I told them I was just 10 minutes late and could be the final passenger, but they refused,” she recalled.
Reflecting on the tragedy, Chauhan said: “I was so disappointed when I missed the flight. I kept thinking that if I had left just a little earlier, I would have been on it. Now, I know missing that flight was nothing short of a miracle.”
