Bangladeshi plane crash at Nepal airport kills 49 and injures 22
At least 49 people were killed and 22 injured when a Bangladeshi passenger plane crashed while landing at Kathmandu airport yesterday.
“Forty people died at the spot and nine died at two hospitals in Kathmandu,” police spokesman Manoj Neupane said.
A Tribhuvan International Airport official said there were 67 passengers and four crew on board the US-Bangla Airlines plane from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Officials said the plane crashed on the east side of the runway and skidded into a nearby football field.
Airline spokesman Kamrul Islam said 33 of the passengers were Nepalis, 32 were Bangladeshis, one was Chinese and one was from the Maldives.
The plane was a Canadian-made Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop, Mahbubur Rahman of Bangladesh’s civil aviation ministry told AFP. Other sources said the aircraft was 17 years old.
Air traffic tracker Flightradar24 tweeted the final 12 minutes of the flight, from the moment the plane dropped to 3,535 metres, descended a further 2,200 metres, briefly climbed 670 metres and then crashed at 8.33am yesterday.
The plane swerved repeatedly as it prepared to land in Kathmandu, said Amanda Summers, an American working in Nepal. The crowded city sits in a valley in the Himalayan foothills.
“It was flying so low that I thought it was going to run into the mountains,” said Ms Summers, who watched the crash from the terrace of her home office close to the airport.
“All of a sudden there was a blast and then another blast.”
Thick smoke rose from the plane, which ended up on a field at the edge of the airport. Fire crews put out the flames quickly, perhaps within a minute, Ms Summers said.
The plane had circled the airport twice as it waited for clearance to land, Mohammed Selim, the airline’s manager in Kathmandu, told Somoy TV in Dhaka.
Medical student Nitin Keyal was about to board a domestic flight when he saw the plane coming in.
“It was flying very low,” Mr Keyal said. “Everyone just froze looking at it. You could tell it wasn’t a normal landing.”
He said it landed just off the runway, broke apart and burst into flames.
“For a few minutes no one could believe what was happening. It was just terrible,” Mr Keyal said.
Most of the injured were taken to Kathmandu Medical College, the closest hospital to the airport, where relatives wept as they awaited news.