All seven people on a helicopter in northern India were killed early on Sunday when it crashed while ferrying passengers on a popular Hindu pilgrimage route in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, officials said.

The only survivor of the tragic Air India plane crash recalled his experience of walking off the plane after the accident. Viswash Kumar Ramesh, a British national, was onboard the doomed flight AI171, which took off from Ahmedabad on Thursday 12 June, bound for London Gatwick.

Seven people including a toddler were killed when a helicopter ferrying Hindu pilgrims from a shrine crashed in the Himalayas on Sunday.

India aviation regulators said urgent safety checks would be carried out for dozens of Boeing 787 jets in the wake of the Air India crash that killed all but one of the 242 people on board. Air

Indian authorities have ordered what they called “extended surveillance” of all Boeing 787 aircraft in the country’s fleet while they investigate the cause of the Air India crash.

Since Thursday evening, Mr Jignesh and his family have been doing the rounds of the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, trying to find details of his 22-year-old niece - one of the 242 passengers that died in an Air India plane crash earlier that day.

At the hospital in Ahmedabad, family members were giving DNA samples, waiting for official confirmation of their loss in the Air India disaster, and remembering their loved ones.