A year ago, 18-year-old Aryan Asari was an ordinary school student from a remote village in Gujarat’s Aravalli district. Today, he is widely known as the “Aeroplane Boy” after unintentionally capturing the final moments of the Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12 last year, killing 260 people.
Despite the attention the video brought him, Aryan says the traumatic experience continues to haunt him. He has not recorded a single aircraft since that day and still feels uneasy about the idea of flying.
“I had come to Ahmedabad for the first time and saw an aircraft from so close. I started recording it on my phone because I wanted to show my friends back in the village,” Aryan recalled ahead of the first anniversary of the tragedy.
Standing on the terrace of his father’s rented home in Ahmedabad’s Meghaninagar area near the airport, Aryan was fascinated by the low-flying aircraft. What began as a casual recording soon turned into one of the most widely shared videos of the disaster.
“Suddenly, the plane started descending and then crashed in a massive fireball. I was terrified. I had never imagined witnessing something like that,” he said.
Aryan had arrived in Ahmedabad that very morning to spend time with his father, Magan Asari, a retired Army soldier who was then working as a security guard at a Metro station. The trip was also meant to help him purchase textbooks after securing admission to Class 12.
Instead, within hours of reaching the city, he became an eyewitness to one of India’s deadliest aviation disasters. His video quickly spread across social media and television news channels, drawing widespread attention.
As media outlets flocked to his father’s residence, Aryan found himself appearing on multiple television channels to recount what he had witnessed.
A few days later, he returned to his native village in Meghraj taluka of Aravalli district and resumed his studies. He subsequently passed his Class 12 board examinations and is now preparing for college admission.
Although life has gradually returned to normal, the incident has permanently altered how people recognise him. “When I came back to my village, everyone wanted to see the video. My friends told me I had become famous,” Aryan said.
“Even recently, at a wedding, several people approached me and asked, ‘Are you the aeroplane boy?’ and I told them yes,” he added.
However, the tragedy also left him with lingering fears. “Since that day, I have stopped recording aeroplanes. I now feel scared that if I film one, something bad might happen,” he admitted.
The fear extends beyond recording aircraft. Like many young people from rural Gujarat, Aryan hopes to travel abroad one day, but the thought of flying remains difficult.
“I want to go abroad in the future, but right now I don’t have the courage to sit inside an aeroplane,” he said.