Kochi, June 14 -- Forty-year-old Ranjitha G Nair, who was on her way to London for the last time with the aim to finally return home in Kerala, was one of the 241 passengers who died when the Air India flight crashed seconds after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport on Thursday.

"I cannot come to terms with her death because she was with me at every stage of my life. To accept that her voice and her presence at the other end of the phone won't be there anymore is going to be extremely difficult," Dhanya T Nair broke down into tears as she remembered her best friend, Ranjitha G Nair.

A resident of Pullad in Kerala's Pathanamthitta district, Ranjitha had boarded the Air India AI 171 flight from Ahmedabad to return to her nursing job in ...