Aviation expert Sally Gethin has told GB News it is "inexplicable" how one passenger managed to survive the horror Air India collision.India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with British passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh in hospital, the only person to have survived the crash on Thursday.FULL STORY HERE.
00:00But recovery teams, they're still working through the wreckage of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad.
00:05More than 290 people have died, are known to have died, including 241 passengers on board that plane.
00:12Well, a police official says that six bodies have been released to the families who could identify loved ones by sight.
00:18DNA verified remains will take longer.
00:21India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited the hospital where the sole survivor, a British national recovery area,
00:28He says, the survivor says he has no idea how he made it out alive.
00:34Well, Air India and the Indian government are looking at several aspects of the Boeing plane's crash in Ahmedabad,
00:40including issues with the jet's engine thrust, its flaps and why the landing gear remained open.
00:47OK, well, aviation expert Sally Gethin joins us now in the studio.
00:51Sally, absolutely shocking incident yesterday, of course. We've learnt quite a bit since, haven't we?
00:57We've learnt a lot, but obviously the investigation will take a long time to complete.
01:04But already it seems that they've found one of the black boxes, which will be a relief.
01:10It will provide a lot more information immediately.
01:13And obviously we're looking now at whether it could be an issue with the aircraft, because it seems very unusual that the pilots were able to continue trying to pilot the airplane,
01:29but they issued a mayday call before it actually exploded in a fireball.
01:34Well, looking at some of the video footage that we were able to see, and it is incredible how in 2025 we do usually now get to see quite a lot of this video evidence.
01:45It looked like the plane was struggling to take off, dipping down and trying to get up and just wasn't able to gain height.
01:52What are the best theories that we have for why that could have been the case?
01:56So what we saw was it used the full length of the runway.
01:59It seems that the flaps were not deployed, which they should have been deployed at that stage to give more lift to the take off manoeuvre.
02:07And then as it climbed, it seemed to climb all right, but then it levelled off.
02:11And we saw that it was slightly nose up, which suggests that the crew were trying to force it up to pitch up to a climb mode.
02:20But then it absolutely gradually descended.
02:24So there are some theories circulating, for example, that the pilots communicated that they had a loss of thrust or power, which is very concerning, suggests potentially an issue with the actual aircraft.
02:36And also the fact that it just would not achieve that climb, that altitude.
02:42It's so unusual, given the fact it was perfect weather as well.
02:46Everything else seems to have been in place.
02:48And if the pilots had had any concern while they were barrelling down the runway, that they could have aborted, there's a point when you can still abort that take off.
02:58And this miracle survivor, one person survived this hideous incident, seat 11A.
03:07We know that.
03:08We know he's a British national.
03:10Sadly, his brother appears to have died in the very same crash.
03:15I mean, it's hard to really think how someone could have survived such a thing.
03:21But clearly, where he was positioned saved his life.
03:24There is something inexplicable about how this one individual survived.
03:29We're grateful that he did survive.
03:31I think his survival will be integral to the learning curve for aircraft design engineers, for aerospace manufacturers, because they will want to see what were the forces at work that enabled this particular passenger in that seat to survive.
03:49It also might be involved with the way, the position of the aircraft, the way it hit that building.
03:55Obviously, we can see there are some parts of that aircraft fuselage still intact.
04:02Conventional wisdom has it that the rear of the aircraft affords a bit more protection to passengers, but clearly not in this case.
04:08I mean, looking at the layout of the aeroplane, it did seem that 11A was the seat by the emergency exit.
04:13And whether that door could have been blown out when the plane actually landed, that the sort of fuselage had that shock, the door was out, he was sort of thrown out without doing anything himself.
04:24But it seems, having seen that video that we just played on our screens there, of just the size of the fireball, the tons and tons of aviation fuel that went up in flames.
04:35As you say, it just seems extraordinary that someone was able to survive this.
04:41Yes, it is extraordinary.
04:42And you're right that the aircraft was fully laden with fuel for the long journey ahead, and that multiplied the impact.
04:48I just want to add that Japan has actually opted to, the country of Japan, the government has decided to mandate its airlines, Japan Airlines and Ornipon Airways, to ground their B787 Dreamliner fleet.
05:03But that's extraordinary, because this is such a safe plane up until this point.
05:07Yes, but it doesn't indicate that necessarily there is a flaw with the 787, because the US officials that are also flying to be part of the investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration and also the NTSB, which looks into safety issues, have both stated that there is no need for grounding the 787 at this point.
05:28But sometimes what you see has happened with the 737 MAX is that has a domino effect, and then sometimes other airlines just follow suit anyway.
05:36And that will be a major concern to global airlines, because it is really a workhorse of the skies for long-haul intercontinental travel.
05:45Well, we know that this particular plane had performed many a flight.
05:49Sally Gethin, thank you very much indeed, aviation expert.
