Air India black box is found
Air India investigators have made a major discovery in their search for answers as to what happened to flight AI 171, which crashed on takeoff from Ahmadabad airport on Thursday afternoon.
One Black Box Data Flight Recorder has been recovered and sent for analysis and there are unconfirmed reports that a second black box has also been recovered. These vital pieces of the puzzle will hold a lot of answers to the question on everyone's mind, just 'what happened' to make a state of the art Boeing 787 Dreamliner fall from the sky.
Its known the experienced pilots issued a 'Mayday' call seconds after takeoff but when air traffic control responded to their distress call, they got no reply from the flight deck and the jet crashed seconds later. Firefighters work at the site where Air India flight 171 crashed in a residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad. Pic: Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images
The death toll currently stands at 279 souls, but investigators have not ruled out the possibility of finding more people in the wreckage of the aircraft, and on the ground in and around the hostel which housed Medical students, into which the plane crashed and exploded in a fireball on impact.
A team of four UK aviation accident experts have arrived in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, to assist in the crash investigation which is expected to take three months to complete. India's prime minister Narendra Modi (left) meeting with Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, sole survivor of the Air India flight 171 crash, at a hospital in Ahmedabad. Pic: Narendra Modi Youtube Channel/AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile families of passengers have gathered at the Civil Hospital in Ahmadabad where the dead were taken, and relatives have been giving DNA samples to doctors to try to identify their family members.
As the investigation into the deadly crash gets underway, the only survivor of the impact has been giving his account of what happened to police and investigators.
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh who was travelling in seat 11A is the only miracle survivor who walked out of the wreckage with cuts and bruises. His information will be of vital importance to investigators as they try to piece together exactly how this dreadful tragedy unfolded, what led to the aircraft seeming to stall in mid-air and then crash to earth with the loss, as of today, 279 precious lives.
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