Captain Kishore Chinta, a former investigator with India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), calls this "the rarest of the rare" crashes - a controlled flight into terrain just 30 seconds after take-off. "To my knowledge, nothing quite like this has ever happened," he told the BBC.

Investigators in India are studying the black boxes of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner after recovering them from the aircraft wreckage to ascertain the cause of last week’s plane crash that left at least 270 people dead.

The deadly crash of Air India Flight 171 last week has centered renewed scrutiny on the airplane's manufacturer, Boeing, and this time it's the 787 Dreamliner in investigators' sights. The accident, which killed over 270 people, was the first fatal crash for the Dreamliner since the model began flying in 2011.