‘I went flying like a piece of laundry in a dryer’
‘It was never about me – it was about my beloved fiance’
‘Don’t ask if he has survivor’s guilt’
‘Why me? Why not?’

When Annette Herfkens saw the images of a man miraculously walking away from the Air India flight disaster on Thursday she had one thought in her mind: “Please, leave him alone.”

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British man who had been visiting relatives in India, was sitting in seat 11A and somehow suffered only minor facial injuries when the Gatwick-bound Boeing 787 crashed shortly after take off in Ahmedabad.

His brother Ajay is thought to be among the 241 passengers and crew who were killed.

Ms Herfkens, 64, has a unique insight into what Mr Ramesh is now going through.

They are both among only a handful of people around the world who are known to have been the lone survivor of a plane crash.

‘I went flying like a piece of laundry in a dryer’

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh is visited by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Photo: AFP)

On 14 November, 1992, Vietnam Airlines flight 474 came down in the mountains on its approach to Nha Trang airport killing 24 passengers and six crew.

Ms Hefkens, who had been on holiday with her fiance Willem van der Pas, was the only person to survive.

She believes it may have been because of an impulsive decision not to wear her seatbelt – she was nervous about flying on such a small plane and the belt made her feel more claustrophobic.

“I went flying… I say in my book [Turbulence: A True Story of Survival] like a piece of laundry in a dryer,” Ms Hefkens, a former Santander banker who lives in Holland, told The i Paper.

“I went round and round and then I woke up under the seat of another dead person.

The wreckage of Vietnam Airlines flight 474 which crashed in 1992

“I was hearing the motors and the next thing was jungle sounds and I could see through the hole in the fuselage, the jungle growth because the cockpit had broken off.

“It was complete chaos.”

‘It was never about me – it was about my beloved fiance’

Despite suffering extensive injuries, including multiple broken bones and a collapsed lung, Ms Herfkens managed to crawl away from the wreckage and survived another eight days in the Vietnamese jungle before she was rescued.

Looking back, she says the pain of her injuries was secondary to the grief of having lost partner Willem – the pair had been together for 13 years and were planning their wedding when he was killed in the crash.

It will be a similar feeling for Mr Ramesh, Ms Herfkens believes.

Annette and her fiance Willem van der Pas had been planning their wedding before the tragic crash

“He’s not dealing with the fact he survived a plane crash, he’s dealing with the fact that his brother died,” Ms Herfkens said.

“And it doesn’t matter how he died, whether it was a plane crash or a car crash.

“You wake up, it’s very fast, and you discover your loved one is dead next to you – that’s what happened to me, it was never about me it was about my beloved [Willem].

“Of course with me I had to wait eight days in the jungle to get rescued, and that’s another story, but it did not compare to the loss of my beloved.

“So that’s always my first thought ‘oh my god they are going to hunt him down’. You’re not a celebrity by choice, you’re a celebrity by misery.

“So I feel the need to say that – leave him alone with his mourning.”

‘Don’t ask if he has survivor’s guilt’

Mr Ramesh, a textiles worker from Leicester, is said to have told family that he remembers “a loud noise” before the crash and then came round to find bodies all around him.

He was scared and so stood up and ran until someone grabbed him and put him in an ambulance.

He is now in hospital where he has already been interviewed by TV crews.

Ms Herfkens spent several months receiving medical treatment in Singapore and remembers “people following me around everywhere”.

“Everywhere someone was taking pictures of my broken face,” she added.

Annette Herfkens has returned to Vietnam since her life changing experience

It wasn’t until many years later, in particular when a young Dutch boy was the sole survivor of a plane crash in Libya in 2010, that Ms Herfkens felt ready to share her story.

“One day he [Mr Ramesh] will say ‘hey I’m a member of the lone survivor club’ and then that’s when you start deciding if that’s part of your identity or not,” she said.

“That’s also a choice. It takes time to realise it all.

“Another thing I say now is please don’t ask him ‘do you have survivor’s guilt?’

“Because that is quite a rude question, it’s an awful question to deal with, I got that a lot over the years.

“I’ve had all kinds of answers… and it’s like people almost talk you into it.

“I was 31, he’s an older man, he’s a grown up so he will manage that.”

‘Why me? Why not?’

After the Vietnam crash, Ms Herfkens went on to marry a colleague Jaime Lupa and moved to New York where she had two children, Joosje who is 28 and Max who is 26.

She has been a successful Wall Street trader and believes some of her natural instincts in the fast-paced world of stocks and shares are the reason she survived.

It took Herfkens several years to be ready to tell her story

“You have to overcome your ego, your fears and do the right thing,” she said.

Although Ms Herfkens knows she is lucky to have survived, she says she has not dwelt on the question of why she survived when others did not.

“It’s like ‘why me? why not?’ It’s all random, I don’t believe in predestination, I’m spiritual, and I did have a spiritual experience in the jungle but… life throws you stuff and you try to handle it the best [you can],” she said.

“I’m a realist, when I woke up in the jungle it was like ‘you have to accept that this is real, you are not in a romantic resort with your fiance as you planned and now you’re in the jungle’.

“You have to accept things for the way it is and not the way it should be.”