Plane with 4 Indians on board missing in Nepal
KATHMANDU: A small passenger plane operated by a private airline went missing in mountainous Nepal on Sunday with 22 people, including four Indian nationals, on board during cloudy weather, and officials said search teams had been sent to the site of a fire spotted by local residents.
State-owned Nepal Television said villagers had seen an aircraft on fire at the source of the Lyanku Khola River at the foot of the Himalayan mountain Manapathi, in a district bordering Tibet.
The Twin Otter 9N-AET plane belonging to Nepal’s Tara Air took off at 10: 15 am from Pokhara for a 20-minute flight, and lost contact with the control tower 15 minutes later, according to an airline spokesperson.
A Nepal Army helicopter carrying 10 soldiers and two employees of the civil aviation authority landed on the bank of a river near the Narshang Monastery, the possible site of the crash, Prem Nath Thakur, general manager of the Tribhuvan International Airport, said.
“Ground search teams are proceeding toward that direction,” Tara Air spokesperson Sudarshan Gartaula said, referring to the fire site. “It could be a fire by villagers or by cowherds. It could be anything.”
The airplane was located after Nepal Telecom tracked down the cellphone of the airplane’s pilot Captain Prabhakar Ghimire through the Global Positioning
System (GPS) network.
“The cell phone of Captain Ghimire of the missing aircraft has been ringing and Nepal Army’s helicopter has landed in the possible accident area after tracking the captain’s phone from Nepal Telecom,” Thakur said. “We have also sent Nepal Army and Nepal Police personnel on foot for the search,” he added. Chief District Officer of Myagdi Chiranjibi Rana told The