Staying alive – the essential guide to surviving air travel

The black box recorder, already recovered from the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 that crashed at India’s Bajpe airport, will reveal the split-second decision-making which caused it to overshoot the runway and burst into flames.

What it won’t reveal is why only eight passengers survived.

However, data from previous aviation disasters would suggest that many more of those on board should have come out of it alive. The accident involving the discount Indian airline wasn’t like the other, where the only survivor, a little boy, lived through no actions of his own, but simply because of his position in the plane and his youth.