Air India crash black box: One of two black boxes of Boeing 787 Dreamliner headed for London Gatwick Airport recovered - after 241 passengers killed

Investigators were able to recover one of the two black boxes from the wreckage and a search was on for the other, Hindustan Times reported. Air India said the passengers included 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese citizens and one Canadian. "We are still verifying the number of dead, including those killed in the building where the plane crashed," a senior police officer said.

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, this morning visited the site of the deadly plane crash in Ahmedabad and met the sole survivor at the hospital. In a post on X, he said: "The scene of devastation is saddening."

"Met officials and teams are working tirelessly in the aftermath. Our thoughts remain with those who lost their loved ones in this unimaginable tragedy”.

The Boeing 787 aircraft departed from Ahmedabad airport in the western Indian state of Gujarat at 1.39pm local time (8.09am BST) on Thursday. But after issuing a mayday call, it crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar just five minutes after taking off, India’s civil aviation authority confirmed.

The "mayday" call is an internationally recognised distress signal used by pilots or sailors in voice radio communications to indicate a life-threatening emergency. There will not be a clear idea of what happened until a full investigation has been carried out.

Air crash investigations follow a protocol laid out by an International Civil Aviation Organization document called Annex 14. India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau will lead this investigation, putting together a team that will be assisted by representatives from the US National Transport Safety Bureau and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, representing the countries of the plane’s manufacturer and passengers aboard.

The team will conduct a forensic investigation of the crash site to make sense of what happened. Alongside material evidence found at the site, they will look at the data stored in the plane’s “black box”, which includes data from the flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder, to learn about what happened in the leadup to the crash.