Arjun Patoliya had travelled to India to hold a funeral for his wife Bharti. After fulfilling his wife’s dying wish to scatter her ashes in Gujarat, Mr Patoliya boarded the Air India flight to Gatwick to return home to his two daughters, aged four and eight.

It’s also the latest disaster to hit the beleaguered American aerospace giant — which has been dogged by a door that blew off a 737 jet, a leaky spacecraft that stranded astronauts on the International Space Station for months, as well as politically damaging delays in outfitting the new Air Force One jets.

The death toll in the Air India crash has risen to at 270 after recovery teams found at least 25 more bodies in the debris.

The crash happened just weeks after the company cut a deal with the U.S. government to avoid taking criminal responsibility for a pair of deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.