She Missed Air India Flight by 10 Minutes Due to Traffic

Everyone understands the stress of getting stuck in traffic on the way to the airport, yet student Bhoomi Chauhan was especially irritated on Thursday when the gridlock in and around Ahmedabad caused her to miss her flight by just 10 minutes. That annoyance has since turned to gratitude, after Chauhan, 28, found out shortly after she was turned away at the Air India gate that her flight, AI171, had crashed right after takeoff, killing nearly all of the 242 people on board and more people on the ground, per the BBC.

There was only one survivor from the crash, who's now hospitalized. "This is totally a miracle for me," says Chauhan, who lives in the UK's Bristol with her husband. The student tells Republic that she's "completely devastated" by the tragedy and that her mind "is totally blank now after hearing all that has happened." The student's father tells the Times of India that they'd pleaded with the gate agents to let his daughter board her flight before she was turned away. "We thank Mother Goddess for protecting our daughter," Chauhan's mother adds. (More Air India stories.)