India, June 16 -- A mother who died in the Air India plane crash had been reluctant to travel and feared leaving her young son behind for the first time, a colleague has said.

Abdhiben Patel, known as Abdhi, 40, was killed when flight AI171 crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad on Thursday. She had flown to India just two weeks earlier to care for her elderly mother, but was hesitant to make the trip and leave her eight-year-old son behind.

"She didn't want to go," said Atif Karim, 45, her colleague and close friend at Zone Beauty Studio in Northampton. "She told me, 'I just don't like being away from him'. It was her first time leaving him, and she was very nervous." "She wasn't excited," he added.

"It was a sense of duty. Her...