The head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Stephanie Pope, met the chairman of Air India on Monday in India, two sources said, as the companies seek to find the cause of last week's fatal crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The Air India flight fell from the sky on Thursday and killed at least 270 people in Gujarat state, officials said Saturday.

There have been cases of a very small number of survivors in very serious accidents, but it is "very rare" for there to be only one, a professor told Newsweek.

Air India Flight 171 crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, killing 279 – including on-board passengers and people on the ground. A UK-based report suggests pilots made a last-ditch manoeuvre to overcome the sudden and rare dual-engine flameout by deploying the emergency ram air turbine.