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.

The black boxes will provide cockpit conversations and data related to the plane's engine and control settings to investigators and help them in determining the cause of the crash.

The deadly crash of Air India Flight 171 last week has centered renewed scrutiny on the airplane's manufacturer, Boeing. 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.