Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Corder. It's Friday the 13th of June and a tragic day.

About 24 hours ago from when I am recording here at London, Gatwick, Flight A.I.171 from Ahmedabad to London was due to depart.

As you will know, the aircraft took off, flipped through briefly

and then crashed with the loss of 241 of the 242 passengers on board.

This is an outlier in terms of international aviation. It is a long time

since we have seen anything on this scale and my heart goes out to those who have lost loved

ones as a result of this terrible tragedy. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Of course,

there will be quite a lot of speculation already about the causes of the disaster. It's far too

early, though, to draw any firm conclusions. The investigators who've been working at the crash

site overnight will have a checklist of things

that they want to do.

They want, of course, to interrogate the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder

to find out what was happening in the aircraft before it lost height and crashed in a residential area.

There's also going to be investigation of what the communications were with air traffic control.

They'll be looking at CCTV images, anything to help understand the factors that were involved in the first fatal accident involving the Boeing 787 Dreamlight.

And they'll be doing it in a hurry because there is any evidence of a hitherto unknown problem

that could jeopardise the safety of other aircraft.

They want to make that known as soon as possible.

As always in the early stages of an investigation,

there is wild speculation online, but let me lay out the key areas they will be looking at.

They will get their work done as swiftly and as professionally as they can,

both the Indian accident investigators and a team from

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