Air India flight crash: How did one man survive - what we know about the miracle sole survivor, British man Vishwash Kumar Ramesh in seat 11A

Then, it emerged there was one survivor. A British national of Indian origin, identified as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh by the Hindustan Times, miraculously survived the plane crash.

“Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” it quoted him as saying in an interview at the hospital where he was being treated. He said he had been visiting family and was returning to the UK with his brother, who had been sitting in a different row. He didn’t know if his brother had survived, he said.

Air India later confirmed that of the 242 people on board the flight, 241 had died, making Ramesh the sole survivor. A doctor told CNN that Ramesh’s condition was “not very critical” and that he could be released in the next couple of days.

Indian news outlets have shared a photo of Ramesh’s boarding pass, which indicates that he was in seat 11A of the flight, in the emergency exit row, just in front of the plane’s left wing. CNN safety analyst and former US Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector David Soucie expressed surprise that someone seated at that part of the plane would survive such a crash.

That seat is “right where the spar of the wing would go under and it would be a solid place for the aircraft to hit the ground, but as far as survivability above it, that is incredibly surprising,” he told CNN. Research normally suggests that the seats at the back of the plane are the safest place to be in a crash – but this man was quite close to the front.

Reports say the plane “broke in half”, and the passenger found himself in the front half while the rear caught fire. He then walked from the wreckage and was found by rescuers. We still don’t know yet how the man survived.

There will not be a clear idea of what happened until a full investigation has been carried out. Air crash investigations follow a protocol laid out by an International Civil Aviation Organization document called Annex 14.

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau will lead this investigation, putting together a team that will be assisted by representatives from the US National Transport Safety Bureau and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, representing the countries of the plane’s manufacturer and passengers aboard. The team will conduct a forensic investigation of the crash site to make sense of what happened. Alongside material evidence found at the site, they will look at the data stored in the plane’s “black box”, which includes data from the flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder, to learn about what happened in the leadup to the crash.