Dubai-Kerala Air India Express plane crash: "The seats turned upside down and we fell out of them"

Dubai: “There was a loud sound and we went up again,” a mother of four who survived Friday’s Air India Express plane crash along with her kids told Gulf News over phone.

Shahina and her children Ziyan, 14, Zeya, 10 and seven-year-old twins Zain and Zamil, who were returning after a visit to her husband Anshad in Sharjah, had a miraculous escape with moderate injuries in the crash.

Speaking to Gulf News briefly over phone from Aster MIMS Hospital in Kozhikode, Shahina recounted the terrifying moments of the Vande Bharat Mission plane crash.

Everything was normal till the flight started descending. Shahina and kids, who were wearing PPE to safeguard themselves from COVID-19, were safely secured with the seat belts.

“Suddenly there was a loud sound and we went up again,” said Shahina, still struggling to get out of the shock.

Amid all the cries and screams, she said the flight jerked and passengers fell off the seats.

“All of us were wearing the PPE and had the seat belts on. But the seats turned upside down and most of us fell of the seats.”

She said she couldn’t recall what exactly happened later.

“I was only looking for my kids. They were all near me. But they had gone under the seats.”

Shahina sustained injuries on her head and leg. She said rescuers pulled her and kids out and they were initially rushed to two different hospitals.

“I lost my phone and passport and everything. I couldn’t call anyone. I heard someone has come from my home.”

When Gulf News offered to inform her husband and her father about her, she requested not to call her father “as he is a heart patient.”

When we rang her husband in Sharjah, an emotional Anshad said he had already been informed about his family’s miraculous escape.

Thanking God for saving his wife and children, he said: “Our relatives have reached MIMS Hospital where Shahina and the elder children are admitted. My twin sons were in another hospital. But they have managed to take them also to the same hospital now,” he said.

His wife and children had come over to the UAE on March 13 to spend their vacation with him. Their visit visas had expired on June 10.

They were returning home before the deadline given to stranded visit visa holders to exit the UAE during the COVID-19 pandemic.