A WIFE on the doomed Air India flight excitedly called her husband just minutes before take-off to say she would be home soon.
Nurat Jahar, 29, and care worker hubby Sohail Iproyaliya had gone to Gujarat to visit family at the start of May.
He had to return home to Leicester a fortnight later, and Nurat was heading back on Thursday on tragic flight AI 171.
She could not wait to see her husband of five years and called him one last time on her mobile as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was taxiing on the runway ready to take off.
But around an hour later, stunned Sohail was told she was dead.
Heartbroken family friend Mohammed Ghanchi, 28, said: “Sohail had to come home after two weeks because of work commitments but she stayed to look after her father while her brother went to Mecca.”
Another friend Shahrukh Mg, 33, added: “They were very happy. We are all shocked at the loss.
“She was a very kind character, extremely friendly. Sohail is so upset. He flew to India yesterday.”
The couple lived just a few hundred yards from the Leicester home of miracle survivor Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40.
The death toll rose to 279 with 38 people killed on the ground making the tragedy the worst aviation disaster this century after 9/11, and India’s worst-ever single air tragedy.