‘It’s almost inexplicable’ – aviation expert on sole survivorpublished at 05:18 British Summer Time

05:18 BST

British man Vishwashkumar Ramesh was the only person to survive the plane crash in Ahmedabad.

“This is almost unheard of” Guy Gratton, associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University tells BBC Newsnight.

“A modern airliner is designed to be crashworthy” meaning “if a crash happens everybody has the best possible chance of surviving,” he says.

Because of this,”either you see a large number of survivors, or you see none because the accident was so severe. So to see one is really unusual,” Gratton adds.

He says if he has to guess, Ramesh’s seat – in 11A – could have been “thrown clear” from the plane in the crash, with him still in it, and he was “just incredibly lucky”.

"Seat 11A was near emergency exit" reads the headline of the graphic, with a subheading titled "Air India Boeing 787-8". A seat map of the Air India flight that crashed is shown in grey on a white background with seat 11A highlighted in red. It is a few rows ahead of the plane's wings and just behind an emergency exit. A smaller graphic of the plane highlights its length as 57m.Image source, Seatguru/BBC