Initial analysis of the footage of the Air India aircraft carrying 242 people, including 12 crew members, that crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Thursday afternoon, reveals that the pilots did their best to prevent the aircraft from losing altitude.

According to experts who analysed the first available crash video, the flight seems to be losing height after take-off from about 800 feet. Then as it drops down, the pilots are trying desperately to keep the nose up and give further thrust to the aircraft.

Experts pointed out that during take-off, often, a phenomenon called stalling hits aircraft. When an aircraft is impacted by stalling, the aircraft drops like a stone from a height above 100 feet. This is because the aircraft's bank angle and thrust given are disproportional -- there is a mismatch. Pilots are especially trained to handle this situation.

They further said that in modern aircraft, the flight steering controller rattles violently if the aircraft is drifting towards a stall position. In that scenario, the pilots can recover the aircraft through the established training procedures they have updated on simulators.

The aircraft, under the command of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kundar, departed from Runway 23 at 1:39 PM IST. Captain Sabharwal, an experienced Line Training Captain (LTC), had 8,200 hours of flying experience. His co-pilot had 1,100 hours of flying experience.

According to Air Traffic Control (ATC), the aircraft issued a 'Mayday' call immediately after departure. However, all subsequent attempts by ATC to contact the aircraft received no response. The plane went down outside the airport perimeter almost immediately after its departure from Runway 23.

The video analysis also showed that the landing gear was not withdrawn into the aircraft. This not only indicated, according to experts, towards an early take off but also to the possibility that the pilots failed to give enough thrust to fly to desired flying height or initial take-off maneuvers.

Authorities are working to recover the aircraft's black box, which includes the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. This will be essential in reconstructing the flight path and understanding the sequence of events that led to the crash.