UK man Owen Jackson said he felt ‘grateful’ after he had been in Ahmedabad on a work trip

Owen Jackson hadn’t told his wife, Phillipa, that he had changed his flight. Photo / Supplied

A British father who was booked on the Air India plane that crashed has said he feels “grateful” after he changed his flight at the last minute.

Owen Jackson, 31, was in India for work but had not told his wife, Phillipa, 30, that he was no longer flying home from Ahmedabad last Thursday.

Phillipa feared she had been widowed when news broke of the plane crash, in which at least 270 people died.

But Jackson, from Saffron Walden, Essex, had fortuitously changed his booking to Saturday because he was tied up with work.

“It’s a shock,” he told the Sun. “I’m more grateful than anything else. It is such a weird coincidence.

“You hear it every now and again about planes going down, and you don’t really think much of it, but when it’s the actual aircraft you’re potentially getting on two days later, it does make you think.”

Jackson was coincidentally booked on to seat 11A on his Saturday flight – the same number as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the disaster.

Jackson, a teacher, was unaware of her husband’s fate for hours because he had not said that he had changed his flights, and he was also in meetings until two hours after the crash.

“I work with children, so I was kind of teaching at the time and just trying not to let them see or know what I was feeling,” she said.

“I still feel affected by it now, to be honest with you, for days. I was just bursting into tears randomly.

“The way we felt is nothing compared to how the victims and their families are actually feeling, my heart really goes out to them. It’s just awful.”

Jackson added: “I hadn’t checked my phone two hours after it happened, after the news broke.

“I probably was one of the last people to find out about it, funnily enough, because I was in meetings exactly when the news was breaking.”

All but one of the 242 passengers on board died in the crash, including 52 British nationals.

Investigators are continuing to search the crash site in the Meghaninagar district, nearly 1.5km from the end of the runway at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner headed for London Gatwick crashed into a hostel, where medical students and their families were living, 30 seconds after take-off.

India has ordered urgent safety tests of Boeing 787s. The black box had been recovered and was being examined by investigators.

The cause of the crash remains a mystery, with theories focusing on whether it was a catastrophic mechanical failure or pilot error.

Captain Steve Scheibner, an aviation expert, later claimed the co-pilot of Air India may have made a fatal error that caused the crash.

Ed Pierson, a former manager at Boeing, said it was “possible” that safety concerns raised in 2019 could be linked to the crash.

Other theories include the possibility of two bird strikes taking out both engines; however, this is thought unlikely.

An anti-terrorism team is understood to be part of the official investigation, although this is thought to be routine.