Authorities investigating the deadly Air India crash that killed at least 279 are studying the black boxes of the plane, and are looking at whether it was overloaded and if the pilots were properly trained.

The Gatwick-bound Air India aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, crashed on a medical college hostel soon after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad last Thursday.

Only one passenger, British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, survived the crash, while 241 people on board and 29 on the ground were killed in one of India's worst aviation disaster in decades.

Experts from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau are probing the crash with assistance from the UK, the US and officials from Boeing.

Amit Singh, a former pilot and an aviation expert, said the recovery of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, or black boxes, are crucial to piece together the sequence of events.