New Delhi/Ahmedabad, June 14 -- Air India has decided to not operate flight number AI-171 and replace it with flight number AI-159, officials said on Friday, a day after a flight by that number crashed seconds after take off from the Ahmedabad airport killing 241 people on board. "The flight from Ahmedabad to Gatwick [London] will be re-numbered to AI-159. The return flight too will be changed to AI-160," an official said requesting anonymity. "The change will start to reflect soon," the official said. Air India officials remained unavailable for a comment. On Thursday afternoon, the London bound flight crashed seconds after taking off with 242 people, including 12 crew members, on board. While the government is yet to release official figures of casualties, Union home minister Amit Shah, who visited the site of the crash, confirmed that only one of the 242 people on board survived. "The idea behind changing the number of a flight is to avoid triggering trauma or bad memories," a former airline official said. "It is also a way to disassociate the route from the tragedy in the minds of passengers and travellers," this person said. The last time any airline re-numbered its flight was in 2014 when a Malaysian Airlines plane on the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route operating as MH370 was renumbered to MH318 just days after the disappearance. Return route MH371 was also changed to MH319. The airline also re-numbered flight MH17 in July in the same year. It was changed to MH19. "Such accidents are extremely rare to take place. It is difficult to understand the cause of the accident by looking at the visuals out in public domain," a former pilot said requesting anonymity. The aircraft, on Thursday carried almost a full load of 125,000 litres of fuel. It entered a slow descent shortly after taking off at 1.38pm, with its landing gear still extended before exploding into a huge fireball upon impact. "An IndiGo flight that was lined up, aborted take-off after its pilot suspected issues with the Air India take off," an official on condition of anonymity said. "The pilot reportedly heard some unusual noise while taking off before noticing the fire," an official of the Ahmedabad airport said requesting anonymity....