Black box found in worst air disaster in a decade

The flight data recorder has been recovered from the wreckage of Thursday's Air India crash in Ahmedabad, as investigations continued into the cause of the worst aviation disaster in a decade.

- Esther Addley Hannah Ellis-Petersen

The discovery of one of the aircraft's two black boxes "marks an important step forward in the investigation", India's civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, posted on X. "This will significantly aid the inquiry into the incident."

All but one of the 242 passengers and crew onboard the London-bound flight were killed when it ploughed into a residential district shortly after takeoff and exploded.

Kanan Desai, the deputy commissioner of police in the city, said 265 bodies had been counted, suggesting at least 24 people died on the ground, but the final death toll remains unconfirmed.

Yesterday teams continued to search the wreckage of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft and the buildings into which it crashed, including a staff hostel at a nearby hospital.

In emotional scenes, hundreds of family members waited for hours at the Civil hospital in the northern Indian city to give DNA samples in the hope of identifying and retrieving their loved ones' remains.

Doctors had worked through Thursday night collecting dental samples from bodies that had been recovered, one told reporters.

Ashfaque Nanabawa, 40, said he was searching for his cousin Akeel Nanabawa, and his cousin's wife and four-year-old daughter, who had been onboard. He had spoken to his cousin on the plane just before takeoff , he said. “He called us and he said: ‘I am in the plane and I have boarded safely and everything was OK.’ That was his last call.”