By Sakshi Dayal, Allison Lampert and David Shepardson NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Investigators have downloaded flight recorder data from an Air India crash this month that killed 260 people, India's civil aviation ministry said on Thursday,

Investigators have downloaded flight recorder data from an Air India crash this month that killed 260 people, India's civil aviation ministry said on Thursday, a long-awaited step towards understanding the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade.

Investigators have successfully recovered data from the black boxes of Air India Flight 171. India’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau confirmed it had begun to analyse information from the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders.