At least 67 dead in Nepal plane crash

At least 67 dead in Nepal plane crash

At least 67 people died in the crash of a Yeti Airlines plane carrying 72 people in central Nepal on Sunday, police said.

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“31 (bodies) were taken to hospitals,” police officer AK Chhetri told AFP, adding that 36 other remains were found in the ravine where the plane crashed.

The plane from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu crashed near the local airport in Pokhara, central Nepal, where it was due to land on Sunday morning.

This city is a gateway for religious pilgrims and wanderers from all over the world.

The fuselage of the burning plane lay in a deep chasm between this 1958 airport and the new Pokhara International Terminal which opened on January 1st.

The plane was carrying 68 passengers and four crew members, company spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told AFP.

Among them were 15 foreigners, including one Frenchman, he said.

The company added that five Indian nationals were among the passengers, along with four Russians, two Koreans, one Australian, one Argentine and one Irishman.

The cabin is on fire and rescuers are “first concentrating on putting out the fire and rescuing the passengers,” local official Gurudutta Dhakal said.

At the scene of the accident, rescuers sprayed parts of the twin-engine ATR 72 on fire with hoses. Debris from the plane lay all around, including seats.

A video shared on social networks showed dozens of people gathering around a huge bonfire, releasing a thick cloud of black and opaque smoke at the bottom of a deep gorge whose vegetation had already been reduced to ash.

In another video, which AFP has been unable to verify, a plane flies low over a residential area, banking sharply to the left before a loud explosion occurs.

Nepal’s aviation industry has boomed in recent years, transporting goods and people, as well as trekkers and foreign mountaineers, to hard-to-reach areas.

But it suffered from a lack of safety due to inadequate pilot training and maintenance.

The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for safety reasons.

The Himalayan country also has some of the most remote and difficult routes in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks that challenge even experienced pilots.

Airplane operators say Nepal lacks the infrastructure to produce accurate weather forecasts, particularly in remote areas with rugged mountainous terrain, which have had a history of fatal accidents.

Even in the mountains, the weather changes quickly, making for even more challenging flight conditions.

In May 2022, all 22 people on board a twin-engine Twin Otter operated by the Nepalese company Tara Air – 16 Nepalese, four Indians and two Germans – died when the plane crashed.

Air traffic control lost contact with the two-propeller aircraft shortly after takeoff from Pokhara heading for Jomsom, a popular trekking destination.

His wreck was found a day later on a mountainside at an altitude of about 4,400 meters.

Around 60 people took part in the search mission, most of them walking for kilometers.

After this crash, authorities tightened regulations, specifically that the planes could only fly when the weather forecast was favorable throughout the trip.

In March 2018, a US Bangla Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu’s notoriously difficult-to-access international airport, killing 51 people.

The crash was the deadliest in Nepal since 1992, when all 167 people on board a Pakistan International Airlines plane died in a crash near Kathmandu.

Two months earlier, a Thai Airways plane crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.