The last rites of former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani will be held in Rajkot with full state honours on Monday. State-wide mourning will be observed, with the national flags will be flown at half-mast.

47 victims have been identified so far through DNA testing, while bodies of 25 people who died in the Ahmedabad plane crash have been handed over to families.

Turkey has denied that its firm was involved in the maintenance of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which crashed in Ahmedabad this week. Turkey's Directorate of Communications Center for Countering Disinformation said that the claim that the Turkish Technic carried out the maintenance of the Boeing 787-8 passenger aircraft was "false".

"The claim that the crashed aircraft was maintained by Turkish Technic constitutes disinformation aimed at manipulating public opinion regarding Turkiye-India relations," it posted on X on Friday, a day after an Air India flight to London crashed in Ahmedabad, killing 241 people on board and several others on the ground.

Air India's ill-fated Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed soon after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on June 12 underwent comprehensive maintenance checks in June 2023 and was due for the next scheduled comprehensive checks in December this year, according to airline officials.

Officials said on Saturday that the aircraft VT-ANB underwent C checks or comprehensive checks in June 2023, and the next such scheduled checks were to happen in December this year.

The C checks were done by AIESL (AI Engineering Services Ltd).

Former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's final journey will begin at 3pm at Ramnath Para Crematorium, on Monday. Condolences meet have been organised in Rajkot on Tuesday and Gandhinagar on Wednesday.

The Gujarat administration had arranged for the death certificates of those who died in the recent Air India plane crash to be issued directly at the hospital, sparing grieving families the need to visit multiple offices, Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Banchha Nidhi Pani said on Sunday.

"....the black box had to be recovered. The black box is either in the front or in the back. Fortunately, in this case, the tail end (of the plane) was not destroyed, and it was stuck in the first building. The AAIB team requested that cranes, labourers, and engineers be provided to recover the black box. After this, the Black box was recovered..." the Ahmedabad Municipal commissioner said.

"After that, we ensured that people should not go to offices for death certificates. A single-window system was created, and the death certificates were issued then and there," he said.

The Gujarat government will assign grief counsellors to the families of victims of the Ahmedabad Air India plane crash to deal with the mental trauma, a senior official has said.

As many as 230 teams have been formed to coordinate with families of the victims, Gujarat relief commissioner and revenue secretary Alok Pandey told reporters on Saturday.

In order to avoid any administrative problem, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation will issue a death certificate on the spot. The village patwari can then immediately issue a family relation card so that they do not face any inheritance issue, he said.

Teams have been formed and assigned to individual families with a rank of a deputy collector or tehsildar rank officer. Bodies will be handed over to the families and taken in ambulance to the village or district with a police pilot, Pandey said.

"A grief counsellor will be assigned to every family to deal with the mental trauma," Pandey said.

Authorities here have so far identified 32 victims through DNA testing and bodies of 14 have been handed over to their families, an official said on Sunday.

Additional civil superintendent Dr Rajnish Patel said: "Thirty two DNA samples have matched till now, and 14 bodies have already been handed over to the respective families. These deceased were from Udaipur, Vadodara, Kheda, Mehsana, Arvalli, Ahmedabad and Botad districts."

Former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's DNA profiling has confirmed his death in the Ahmedabad plane crash.

Boeing rival, Airbus, has issued a statement in the backdrop of the tragic Air India crash that left nearly 300 people dead in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad earlier this week. Christian Scherer, the chief commercial officer at Airbus, said safety, not competition, must remain the industry's top priority.

"Safety is in everything that we do, so the tragedy in India -- we don't see that in any way, shape or form as a competitive input," Mr Scherer said ahead of the Paris Air Show, the industry's biggest event of the year, as per Bloomberg.

The process of DNA matching of former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is currently underway.

Densely populated pockets are located around airports in many cities across India and Thursday's Ahmedabad plane crash, in which at least 30 people were killed on the ground as well, has got residents worried about a tragedy like that hitting closer home.

The airport in Mumbai, which can handle more than 40 flights every hour, is surrounded by slums as well as posh homes, and residents of both say flights taking off sometimes give them the jitters now. 

"We are within 1 km of the runway. There is a service road nearby which sees a lot of fish sellers, there are other hawkers selling food items as well. The leftovers are then thrown there, attracting birds," said a resident of an area around the Mumbai airport, implying that the chances of bird hits increase because of this.

According to sources, the DNA testing of former Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who was one of the victims of the fatal crash, is yet to be completed. Once done, his body will be transported on a chartered plane to Rajkot. His final journey will begin from his residence in Prakash Society, Rajkot, passing through Kotecha Chowk, Kalawad Road Underpass, Astron Chowk, Yagnik Road, DH College, Malaviya Chowk, Corporation Chowk, Sanganwa Chowk, Palace Road, and Ramnath Para, before reaching the crematorium.

Ed Pierson - the ex-high-level Boeing manager-turned-whistleblower, who testified before the United States Congress in 2019 that he had flagged safety issues with the company's 737 Max variant - has told NDTV of "chaotic and dangerous manufacturing" at its production facilities.

"That's right... during testimony (to the US Congress in April last year) Mr Salehpour, who is the engineer with Boeing who reported problems, i.e., structural issues, and he provided pretty startling information about employees forcing parts to fit together (by jumping on them, according to some whistleblowers) when you aren't supposed to force them together..," he told NDTV.

Ed Pierson - the ex-high-level Boeing manager-turned-whistleblower, who testified before the United States Congress in 2019 that he had flagged safety issues with the company's 737 Max variant - has told NDTV of "chaotic and dangerous manufacturing" at its production facilities.

"That's right... during testimony (to the US Congress in April last year) Mr Salehpour, who is the engineer with Boeing who reported problems, i.e., structural issues, and he provided pretty startling information about employees forcing parts to fit together (by jumping on them, according to some whistleblowers) when you aren't supposed to force them together..," he told NDTV.

108 Ambulance driver Satinder Singh Sandhu was having lunch when he heard a loud explosion. One look outside one of the hostels of the BJ Medical College campus and he saw the makings of a great tragedy - thick black smoke and chaos. His phone rang and he rushed to the place where the smoke was emanating from to find an aircraft crashed and on fire.

The first person Mr Sandhu saw emerging from the crash site was a heavily burnt security guard. He told NDTV that he also saw the lone survivor of the crashed AI171 aircraft walking from the plane and then attempting to go back to save his relative on board. Unfortunately, Vishwas Kumar Ramesh's relative was among the 241 on board that died in Thursday's crash. The ambulance driver then rushed Mr Ramesh to the hospital, where he underwent treatment.

Congress general secretary and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday said that once the reason for the Ahmedabad plane crash is found, corrective measures need to be taken to protect lives in the future.

"We should be united in our grief and provide as much solidarity as we can to the families of the passengers and others, including medical students, who lost their lives in the incident. It is a moment where we need to stand together and just provide solidarity," she said.

The Congress MP further said that it was also important to find "what went wrong".

"It is being investigated. I am sure the investigating agencies will in the next few days enlighten the nation as to what happened. Then in the future, whatever corrective measures need to be taken, will be taken to protect people and lives," she said.

The bodies of the 274 victims of the Ahmedabad plane crash, who have been identified, are set to be handed over to their families by the Gujarat government on Sunday, sources said.