Nepali rescuers on Monday retrieved 16 bodies from the mangled wreckage of a passenger plane strewn across a mountainside that crashed in the Himalayas with 22 people on board.
Air traffic control lost contact with the Twin Otter aircraft operated by Nepali carrier Tara Air shortly after taking off from Pokhara in western Nepal on Sunday morning headed for Jomsom, a popular trekking destination.
Helicopters operated by the military and private firms braved poor weather to scour the remote mountainous area all day Sunday, aided by teams on foot, but called off the fruitless search when night fell.
After resuming on Monday, the army shared on social media a photo of aircraft parts and other debris littering a sheer mountainside, including a wing with the registration number 9N-AET clearly visible.
“So far, 16 bodies have been recovered and teams are searching for the remaining six. Chances of survival are low but our efforts continue to find them,” Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Deo Chandra Lal Karn told AFP.
There were about 60 people working at the crash site, including army, police, mountain guides and locals, most of whom trekked for miles on foot to get there. The authority said the plane “met an accident” at 14,500 feet (4,420 metres) in the Sanosware area of Thasang municipality in Mustang district.
“Analysing the pictures we received, it seems that the flight did not catch fire. Everything is scattered in the site. The flight seems to have collided with a big rock on the hill,” said Pokhara Airport spokesman Dev Raj Subedi.
Four Indians were onboard, as well as two Germans, with the remainder including a computer engineer, his wife and their two daughters who had just returned from the United States.
The four Indians were a divorced couple and their daughter and son, aged 15 and 22, going on a family holiday. “There was a court order for (the father) to spend time with the family for 10 days every year, so they were taking a trip,” Sonawane said.
According to the Aviation Safety Network website, the aircraft was made by Canada’s de Havilland and made its first flight more than 40 years ago in 1979.
Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a privately owned domestic carrier that services many remote destinations across Nepal. It suffered its last fatal accident in 2016 on the same route when a plane with 23 on board crashed into a mountainside in Myagdi district.
Nepal’s air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas as well as foreign trekkers and climbers. But it has long been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training and maintenance.
The Himalayan country also has some of the world’s most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots. The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.
News18 takes a look at past air crashes in the Himalayan country:
- February 2019: While attempting to find its way back into Kathmandu, a helicopter operated by Air Dynasty crashed into a hill due to poor visibility. All seven passengers — including Nepal’s Tourism Minister Rabindra Adhikari and entrepreneur Ang Chhiring Sherpa — died. A preliminary report into the accident claimed that there had been violations of operating procedures, such as dis-balance of weights due to the positioning of the fuel tank and the incorrect seating arrangements of passengers.
- March 2018: Operated by Bangladeshi airline US-Bangla, a Bombardier Q400 crash landed at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu while returning from Dhaka, killing 49 of the 71 passengers and crew. The incident became the third deadliest air disaster in Nepal’s history as the aircraft skidded off the runway, crashed through an airport fence, halted in a football field, and then exploded. According to the final report published in 2019, Abid Sultan, the captain of the plane and a former member of the Bangladesh Air Force, “seemed to have an emotional breakdown”. The investigators also blamed the crash on the crew’s failure to follow “the standard operating procedure at the critical stage of the flight”.
- September 2011: A Beechcraft 1900D operated by Buddha Air collided with a hill while it was carrying tourists on a sightseeing trip around Mount Everest. Ten Indians were among the 19 people on board who died. Adverse weather conditions were responsible for the accident as the Kathmandu airport and its surrounding area was engulfed in thick monsoon clouds during the crash.
- September 1992: 167 people were killed when an Airbus A300 operated by Pakistan International Airlines crashed while landing at the Kathmandu airport. The flight was on its way from the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi and struck the last mountain ridge that lay 11 kilometres before Kathmandu airport.
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