The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed moments after take-off from India's Ahmedabad city on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and the rest on the ground.
The black boxes of the plane - the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) - were recovered in the days that followed, one from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16.
The ministry said data from the front recorder was accessed on Wednesday by a team led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), with the US National Transportation Safety Board.
"These efforts aim to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the accident and identify contributing factors to enhance aviation safety and prevent future occurrences," the ministry said in a statement.
US National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told Reuters said Thursday she hopes the Indian government will be able to share details from the investigation into the crash in short order.
"For aviation safety and for public safety and public awareness we hope that they will make their findings public swiftly," Homendy said on the sidelines of an aviation event.
She said the NTSB team has been working diligently to provide assistance to India and "we have had excellent cooperation from the Indian government and the AAIB."
The probe into the crash of the Air India plane, which started losing height after reaching an altitude of 650 feet, includes a focus on engine thrust, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that investigators believe the Dreamliner had its emergency-power generator operating when it crashed.
Most air crashes are caused by multiple factors, with a preliminary report expected about 30 days after the accident.
Meanwhile, India has denied entry to a UN investigator after the UN aviation agency took the unusual step of offering one up.
Previously, the International Civil Aviation Organization has deployed investigators to help with certain probes, such as the downing of a Malaysian plane in 2014 and a Ukrainian jetliner in 2020, but those times the agency had been asked for assistance.
ICAO had asked for the investigator who was in India to be given observer status, but Indian authorities refused the offer, the sources said. The news was first reported on Thursday by the Indian news channel Times Now.
India said last week that it was yet to decide where the black boxes would be analysed. The data retrieved from them could provide critical clues into the aircraft's performance and any conversations between the pilots preceding the crash.
India has said its actions have been taken in full compliance with domestic laws and international obligations in a time bound manner.
