Last week Emirates flight EK521 from Thiruvananthapuram, India to Dubai was involved in an accident. The Boeing 777-300, registration number A6-EMW, caught fire after touching the ground in Dubai.

It was an incredible incident with the plane catching fire, but all of the passengers and crew onboard got out. Only 13 passengers were injured.

The investigation is ongoing though there are theories today which do a good job describing the facts as we know them. For now I’m just grateful for how well the airline, airport, and crew for how they handled the incident and that the 275 people on the plane survived (sadly a first responder perished). The passengers and crew were lucky.

But one of those passengers may just be The Luckiest Man in the World.

Mohammad Basheer Abdul Khadar walked away from a plane crash and days later won a million dollar lottery jackpot.

The man, who works for a car dealership in Dubai, purchased the ticket prior to departing for India and won just after his return.

His lucky ticket number 0845 was drawn in the Dubai Duty Free Millennium Millionaire at Concourse A at Dubai International Airport, winning him a cool $1 million (Dh3.67 million).

Indian national Khadar, a 62-year-old grandfather, had purchased the ticket on Eid on his way for a vacation with his family in Thiruvananthapuram in the south Indian state of Kerala.

He’s lived in Dubai since 1978 and is four months from retirement. He bought a ticket before each trip home — this was his 17th try at the lotto. And since he was going to move back to India when he returned later this year, it was presumably also his last try.

Khadar earns about $2200 a month and has struggled especially over the last two decades to pay for medical care for his son who was paralyzed in an accident shortly after birth. He plans to use much of his winnings to help struggling people in Kerala.