The sole survivor of the Air India plane tragedy which killed at least 290 people has spoken out, saying he heard a loud noise before the plane crashed shortly after take off.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner took off from the city of Ahmedabad and was en route to London’s Gatwick.

The passenger, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, had been in seat 11A.

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Ramesh, a British national from London who had been visiting family in India, spoke to reporters from his hospital bed.

“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” Ramesh said.

He later told the Hindustan Times: “When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me.”

‘Easy to speculate’ on cause of crash

Former Qantas pilot David Oliver appeared on Sunrise, speaking about the possible cause of the crash.

“It’s very easy to speculate,” Oliver told Sunrise on Friday.

“A loud noise, possibly an engine stall or compressor stall. But if it’s only happened moments before the crash, that would indicate maybe that the engine has had issues prior to the noise.

“It’s very easy to speculate, and passengers’ recollections from events or spectators’ recollections of events can often be somewhat misrepresented, depending on the stress level they’re under.

“(You have to take) that with a grain of salt. It’s very early in the piece to speculate as to the actual cause.

“The most likely supposition is that there’s been a loss of thrust, a lot of power to one or both engines.

“(But) both engines suffering a power loss is extremely, extremely remote so we need to wait for the flight recorder and voice recorder analysis to take place.”

Why was the landing gear not retracted?

Oliver went on to ask questions about the landing gear.

“I haven’t seen video footage of the actual take-off, but it appears the aircraft only climbed a few hundred feet, then levelled off and then began a slow descent, indicating a loss of power or loss of thrust to one or both engines,” he said.

“The thing that strikes me about the video footage is that the landing gear was not retracted. Now, on any take-off on any aircraft, the first thing that happens after aircraft is safely airborne, the pilots immediately raise the landing gear.

“The aircraft will fly with the landing gear down with both engines operating, if one of the engines is at reduced thrust or has lost thrust completely.

“It’s imperative that the landing gear is retracted so that’s my big question at the moment: why was the gear not retracted?”

Family speaks out

British family members of the sole survivor of the Air India crash have spoken to him from his hospital bed, where he said he is “fine”.

Air India confirmed the British man of Indian origin, named by the Hindustan Times as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, was the only survivor on the plane carrying 242 people.

Ramesh was sitting next to his brother on the flight, his cousin Ajay Valgi told reporters on Thursday outside their family home in Leicester in England’s Midlands.

“Yes at least the family is happy that he’s OK but we’re still upset about the brother,” Valgi said.

“We are absolutely upset (about) things, not just because he’s our brother, but (because of) other people as well. There were 242 people on the flight, so obviously it’s not good news is it?” the cousin added.

Survivor ‘not very badly injured’

Ramesh is in a “not very critical” condition and could be released in the next couple of days, Dr Rajnish Patel, professor and head of surgery at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, told CNN.

Patel said Ramesh is “well under management and not very critical. He has some blood in the images, but he’s not very badly injured. He is very comfortable and under strict observation, no issues.”

Asked what Ramesh recalled about the crash, Patel said he was possibly suffering “post-traumatic amnesia”.

“He must’ve suffered that. Like you know, he is not able to give me the complete picture of the event that happened sequentially. What he says is that at one moment there was a lot ... there was some kind of noise. And the other moment he was out. And then when he got up, he was surrounded by dead bodies and all,” Patel said.

Patel said that Ramesh could be released from the hospital “within a day or two”, noting that there are some patient protocols and legal matters that need to be cleared beforehand.

Patel also said the plane had crashed into a residential part of a medical school near the airport, specifically in the dining area.

Patel said patients brought to the hospital following the crash, who had not been on board the plane, fitted into one of two categories. “Either they are dead” or they suffered minor injuries, he said.

“We do not have many critical patients receiving who are still alive.”

- With CNN