A video of the doomed Air India plane seconds before it crashed to earth appears to show a black object falling from it. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner had just taken off from Ahmedabad airport in the state of Gujarat when it failed to gain altitude and crashed moments later.

A video taken of the incident showed the plane slowly descending before crashing into a residential area but closer inspection also appears to show additional details. Just one person survived the tragedy, with British man Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, able to walk from the wreckage before being taken to hospital. Ramesh was sat in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, with some online suggesting that the black object that can be seen falling could be the emergency door.

The British national told the Hindustan Times: “When I saw the exit, I thought I could come out. I tried, and I did. Maybe the people who were on the other side of the plane weren’t able to.” He added: “I don’t know how I survived. I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me…I walked out of the rubble.”

The cause of the crash and identify of the mysterious object has yet to be established as investigators continue to comb the wreckage and interrogate the plane’s black box.

Investigators are understood to be analysing the footage whilst also examining the crash site.

Preliminary investigations are reported to be focused on the engine, landing gear and flaps on the wings.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Jerry Dyer from Big Jet TV, an aviation enthusiast who regularly films planes taking off and landing from airports across the country, was immediately alerted to the plane’s wings in the footage of the crash.

He told the Daily Express: “As soon as I saw it I recognised the flap settings straight away, that is the moving part of the wing that extends at the back.

“From that video it seems that they were not extended and that means you do not have enough lift because the flaps increase the size of the wing and give the plane more lift.

“Without them you will not have any lift. It will take off but do so shallowly and lose altitude and ultimately crash. 

“That is something that the pilot controls. The pilot inputs the setting before takeoff. My biggest concern is I am sure that the systems on these aircraft are sophisticated so the system should shout back at the pilot if wrong.

“As soon as they applied throttle to take-off, they would have had a warning I would imagine. There would have been fail safe measures in place to configure.”

“Whether it was a malfunction or human error we don’t know. It is not something that you can see as a pilot, you wouldn’t know.