The death toll in the deadly Air India plane crash rose to 270 on Saturday, with families increasingly getting upset due to delays in handing over bodies which were badly charred in the tragedy in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

As investigators in India comb through both the wreckage and data left behind by the fatal Boeing 787 crash on Thursday, aviation experts are piecing together their own theories.

Only the passenger in seat 11A on Air India Flight 171 lived to tell the tale, a survival nothing short of a miracle.