The black boxes, which are actually bright orange in colour, are critical in aircraft accident investigations as they provide data on numerous parameters and aircraft systems, helping the investigators identify the most likely causes of an accident.

India's Civil Aviation Ministry says the analysis of black boxes aims to "reconstruct the sequence of events" to find out the cause of the worst aviation disaster in a decade.

Investigators have successfully downloaded flight recorder data from the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner that crashed shortly after takeoff on June 12, killing 260 people. This