Experts have said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches.

“If they were moved because of a pilot, why?” asked US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse.

The switches flipped a second apart, the report said, roughly the time it would take to shift one and then the other, according to US aviation expert John Nance. He added that a pilot would normally never turn the switches off in flight, especially as the plane is starting to climb.

Flipping to cutoff almost immediately cuts the engines. It is most often used to turn engines off once a plane has arrived at its airport gate and in certain emergency situations, such as an engine fire. The report does not indicate there was any emergency requiring an engine cutoff.

At the crash site, both fuel switches were found in the run position and there had been indications of both engines relighting before the low-altitude crash, said the report.

Tim Atkinson, a pilot and aviation consultant, has said “there are very few situations or circumstances which would explain this” — referring to a key finding in the preliminary investigation by Indian authorities.

According to the preliminary report, fuel supply to the engines of the Air India plane that crashed last month was cut off shortly after take-off.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Atkinson explained: “One would be an utterly extraordinary human error, an unintentional act, and the other – I’m very sorry to say – would be an intentional act. And that’s not a suggestion or allegation, it’s simply an analysis of the small amount of information that we have at hand at this moment.”

A preliminary report into the Air India crash that killed 260 people last month showed three seconds after taking off, the plane’s engines fuel cutoff switches almost simultaneously flipped from run to cutoff, starving the engines of fuel.

One pilot can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.

It did not identify which remarks were made by the flight’s captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot transmitted “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” just before the crash.

The 56-year-old had an airline transport pilot’s licence that was valid until 14 May 2026.

He had obtained clearances to fly as pilot-in-command on several aircraft, including the Boeing 787 and 777 and the Airbus A310.

He had a total flying experience of 15,638 hours, of which 8,596 hours were on a Boeing 787.

Mr Sabharwal had called his family from the airport, assuring them he would ring again after landing in London, according to a Times of India report. A pilot who had briefly interacted with him told Reuters he was a “gentleman”.

First Officer Clive Kunder

The 32-year-old had a commercial pilot license, which was issued in 2020 and was valid until 26 September 2025.

He had obtained clearances to fly Cessna 172 and Piper PA-34 Seneca aircraft as pilot-in-command and as co-pilot on Airbus A320 and Boeing 787 jets.

He had a total flying experience of 3,403 hours. Of that, 1,128 hours of experience were as a 787 co-pilot.

Since his school-going days Kunder was passionate about flying, and in 2012 he began serving as a pilot, Indian media reported, citing his relatives. He joined Air India in 2017.

All but one of the 242 people on board were killed when the Air India Boeing 787-8 crashed in Ahmedabad on 12 June.

New footage has now emerged on social media of British man Vishwas Kumar Ramesh walking out of the crash site.

The video shows Mr Ramesh walking out of flames with a phone in his hand as he limps out of the deadly accident.

Locals are seen helping him as black smoke engulfs the sky behind.

Many prospective travellers will see the images of the tragedy in India, and three other passenger jet crashes in the past six months, and conclude that aviation is becoming more dangerous.

Such is the obsession with safety among aviation professionals that many risks have been engineered out. The last fatal accident involving a UK passenger jet was in the 1980s.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent, explains:

Navin Chaudhary’s lunch was interrupted by a deafening explosion. Turning, he saw flames engulfing the dining area where he and his fellow trainee doctors were eating.

As the fire advanced, Mr Chaudhary escaped through a window. From the ground, he saw the tail cone of an Air India plane jutting out of the burning building.

Driven by a sense of duty, Mr Chaudhary and his fellow medical students sprang into action.

“There was fire and many were injured,” he recalled.

He immediately went to the hospital’s intensive care unit, where a stream of injured people, many suffering from burns, were being rushed in.

The aircraft crashed into a medical college hostel in a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing 241 of the 242 people on board.

Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer told the House of Commons that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) had set up its reception centre at a hotel close to the airport “because we thought that would be the best place to receive British nationals rather than the hospital where, tragically, there are no living British nationals”.

Sitting next to an exit door may increase a person’s chances of survival in a crash. However, experts say that the specific seat number, such as 11A, is not universally the safest, as aircraft can have numerous different layouts.

However, aviation experts say that determining the safest seat is not so simple, as aircraft configurations vary significantly and survival usually depends on a complex combination of factors.

“Each accident is different, and it is impossible to predict survivability based on seat location,” Mitchell Fox, a director at the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based nonprofit, said.

Inside a modest two-bedroom apartment in India’s Ahmedabad, Ravina Daniel Christian clutches the edge of her tear-soaked scarf. The home is crowded with relatives but the only voice that carries through the room is hers – spilling with loss.

“He came only for a few days,” she says. “He was returning on 12 June. Just a short visit – only to honour his father.”

Read Namita Singh’s report from Ahmedabad: