72 feared dead after plane crashes in Nepal
‘Weather was clear’ as airliner spins out of control while trying to land at Himalayas gateway
AT LEAST 68 people died after a passenger plane crashed in Nepal while attempting to land on a route popular with tourists trekking in the Himalayas.
The twin-engine Yeti Airlines plane was flying from Kathmandu to the city of Pokhara with 72 people on board when it began spinning sharply at a low altitude while coming into land.
Video posted on social media showed the plane tilting heavily as it flew low above houses. Later, images from the ground showed burning debris and smoke rising from a hillside in the gorge of the Seti River, several miles from Pokhara International Airport.
A Nepal army spokesman said they “expect to recover more bodies” as rescue operations continue and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Nepal’s prime minister, urged the general public to help with relief efforts.
Out of the 68 passengers and four crew on board, 53 were Nepalese with a further 15 foreign nationals, including five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans and one passenger each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France.
Among the victims of the crash was Elena Banduro, a 33-year-old travel blogger from Russia.
Shortly before taking off, she posted a message to her social media followers saying: “Go to Nepal.”
Pokhara International Airport had only begun operations on Jan 1. It is the country’s third international airport and is intended to boost trade and tourism. More than 600,000 tourists visited Nepal in 2022 to seek adventure in its vast Himalayan mountain range and experience its spectacular cities.
Many will take the 30-minute flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara as the latter is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular Himalayan hiking trail, as well as being a hub for extreme sports such as paragliding and bungee jumping.
The “weather was clear” and the immediate cause of the crash is unknown, said Jagannath Niroula, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.
But, Nepal has one of the worst aircraft safety records in the world and fatal crashes are commonplace.
The European Commission imposed a blanket ban on Nepalese airlines entering European airspace in 2013. The ban came after a twin-engine Sita Air flight crashed outside Kathmandu in 2012, killing everyone on board, including seven Britons.
There have been at least 27 plane crashes in Nepal over the past three decades and 20 of them have occurred over the past 10 years.
In May 2022, a Tara Air flight crashed in the mountainous Mustang district of northern Nepal, killing all 22 passengers on board, including German and Indian tourists.
Flying in Nepal is particularly dangerous because the weather can change
‘ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer’
suddenly in the Himalayas, resulting in low visibility, there is a lack of new aircraft and poor maintenance of existing planes and airstrips are often situated in difficult-to-reach mountainous areas.
But, the South Asian country has a poor road network and so Nepalese and tourists alike are forced to rely on aircraft to travel around the remote Himalayan nation.
Tenzing-hillary Airport in the northeastern town of Lukla, which serves as an entry point for those climbing Mount Everest, is considered to be the world’s most dangerous airport.
It is hemmed in by the Himalayas, meaning landings have to be navigated by the pilot’s sight, it also has one of the world’s shortest runways that ends over a steep, vertical drop.
Yeti said it had cancelled all its regular flights for tomorrow in “mourning for the passengers who lost their lives.”
The ATR 72 of European planemaker ATR is a widely used twin-engine turboprop plane manufactured by a joint venture of Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo.
“ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer,” ATR said in a statement.
Airbus and Leonardo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.