The man in seat 11A Exit row may hold clue to 'miracle' escape

Tony Cable, a former senior air crash investigator, has one piece of advice for Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the Air India plane disaster: "Buy a lottery ticket."

- Robert Booth

The 40-year-old Briton walked away from the wreckage of flight AI171 after it crashed within a minute of takeoff from Ahmedabad to London on Thursday. The other 241 passengers and crew died, along with dozens more people on the ground.

Surviving with minor physical injuries seemed miraculous, but the focus on how Ramesh stayed alive has turned to his seat on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, 11A, which was next to an emergency exit near the front of the plane and close to one of the strongest parts of the fuselage, known as the "wing box".

After the plane slammed into buildings about 30 seconds after take-off, Ramesh thought he had died but soon realised he had survived and saw an opening in the fuselage.

"I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out," he said. It was not clear whether this opening was the door or a rupture in the fuselage.

Cable, a former senior inspector of air accidents at the UK's Air Accident Investigations Branch, said: "The aircraft was pretty nose up when it hit the buildings. It has presumably broken open in an area of the fuselage adjacent to this guy and fortuitously he has popped out without major injury."