'I'm hoping for a miracle' Families wait to learn the fate of missing loved ones

As he dropped off his only daughter at Ahmedabad airport on Thursday morning, Suraj Mistry seized the opportunity to take one final family selfie before she went back to London.

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Anuj Behal

As he dropped off his only daughter at Ahmedabad airport on Thursday morning, Suraj Mistry seized the opportunity to take one final family selfie before she went back to London. Kinal Mistry, 24, had laughed lovingly at her father as he made her firmly promise they would meet again soon. "Yes, Daddy, very soon," she said.

Instead, the photo of Kinal smiling beside her mother and father would capture the last moment the family was whole. In scenes of horror that have since reverberated around the world, a few minutes after the flight took off from Ahmedabad airport, it fell from the sky, exploding in a ball of fire and black smoke. Only one of the 242 people onboard survived.

Yet even as bodies continued to be uncovered by rescue teams from the site of the crash, Mistry could not bring himself to accept that Kinal – whom he described as a beautiful dancer "so full of life" – was among the dead. Like so many others who had been onboard the Air India Boeing 787-8, her body had yet to be identified, let alone returned to the family.

Sitting in Civil hospital in Ahmedabad, still in the clothes he wore when he took his daughter to the airport, Mistry was among hundreds of families desperately waiting for answers and clinging to diminishing hope.

"What can I say about Kinal? She was a wonder," he said, his eyes welling up with tears. "She lit up every room with her smile. She was beautiful, inside and out."

Her life was only just beginning, he said. She had married and moved to London last year, where she worked as a choreographer and had also set up a food business out of her own kitchen, as "she loved nothing more than feeding people".

Mistry said: "In just one day our whole world has fallen apart. I don't know if it makes me foolish, but I'm still hoping. Hoping for a miracle. Please, just one miracle."