Since the Tata takeover, India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation has repeatedly fined Air India over safety and other regulatory violations, including an Rs8mn ($95,000) penalty last year for exceeding flight duty time limits. At home, it is competing in a near-duopoly with IndiGo, which has been boosting its international long-haul routes.

Three days after the crash, only 35 bodies had been handed over to relatives from an overall official death toll of 270.

The Air India flight fell from the sky on Thursday and killed at least 270 people in Gujarat state, officials said Saturday.

Air India's Chairman N. Chandrasekaran on Monday told staff that last week's plane crash that killed at least 271 people should be a catalyst to build a safer airline, urging employees to stay resolute amid any criticism.

Abdhi Patel had traveled to India to care for her mother, but was "very nervous" to leave her young son for two weeks, Atif Karim, Patel's colleague at Zone Beauty Studio in Northampton, England, told The Independent. Karim said that Patel, 40, felt a "sense of duty" to travel to India, but "you could tell it was weighing on her."

At least 270 died when the Air India flight crashed into the campus of a medical college in Ahmedabad shortly after takeoff on Thursday. Only one passenger among the 242 aboard survived. At least 29 others on the ground, including five medical students inside the hostel, were also killed.

An Air India Boeing 787-8 flight headed for New Delhi returned to Hong Kong shortly after takeoff Monday because of a "technical issue," Indian media reported.

Investigators could be a step closer to unravelling the mystery of the tragic Air India Flight 171 disaster, with a vitally important tool pulled from the rubble set to help the team piece together th