A black box has been recovered from the site of the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad, India’s civil aviation minister announced on Friday.

241 of the 242 people on the London-bound flight died when it crashed into a residential area less than 60 seconds after take-off on Thursday

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) located the flight data recorder within 28 hours, confirmed Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu.

The London-bound flight crashed into a residential area less than a minute after take-off on Thursday, killing 241 of the 242 people on board.

“The [recovery of the black box] marks an important step forward in the investigation” and will “significantly aid the inquiry” into the disaster, Mr Kinjarapu said.

Commercial airliners are typically equipped with two black boxes — compact yet durable electronic recorders. One recorder captures key flight data, including altitude and speed, while the other records cockpit audio.

Aviation experts say the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — recovered from the rooftop of the medical college hostel where the plane crashed — may help dispel speculation and provide crucial answers in the investigation of the crash that killed 241 people on board.

According to Peter Goelz, former managing director of the NTSB and a CNN aviation analyst the question will be whether the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators, India or another country will ingest the black boxes’ data.

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau now holds the black boxes and other possible evidence related to the crash. Investigators expect the data recorders to shed light on the aircraft’s final moments and the crucial decisions made by the pilots before the crash.

The black box recovery is critical, many experts say, at this point, because the technology will point to what pilots were saying before they made the mayday call.