Two Americans killed in plane crash in Nepal says US.jpgw1440

Two Americans killed in plane crash in Nepal, says US State Department

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Two Americans and two immigrants living in the United States were among 72 people killed after their plane crashed in Nepal over the weekend, the worst such plane disaster for the Himalayan nation in 30 years.

Yeti Airlines Flight 691 took off from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu on Sunday morning. It should be a 25-minute drive to Pokhara, a town about 125 miles west that’s popular with tourists. However, authorities have been warned that the plane crashed into a ravine 30 minutes after takeoff and about a mile from the two-week-old Pokhara airport.

No one survived, authorities said Monday, and authorities on the ground were still searching the debris to find out why the plane crashed.

“Our thoughts are with the families of those on board,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a briefing Wednesday. “The United States stands ready to assist Nepal in any way we can at this difficult hour.”

The Washington Post previously reported that an airline statement indicated there were at least 53 Nepalese nationals and 15 foreign nationals on the flight — with people from India, Russia, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, France and Ireland.

Price did not name the two Americans and two immigrants living in the United States who died.

The Post has reported the identities of some of the people who died in the plane crash: an Australian school teacher, an Argentine hotelier, a British ballet dancer who the day before her 34 US-trained co-pilot, whose husband also died in a plane crash came.

Victims of the plane crash in Nepal: A dancer, folk singer and outdoor enthusiast

Yeti Airlines Spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told the Post on Tuesday that Captain Anju Khatiwada went to Toulouse, France, in 2021 to train on the ATR 72 – the twin-engine turboprop aircraft involved in Sunday’s flight – and had nearly 6,400 hours of flying experience.

Officials recovered both the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, a spokesman for Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu said. The data recorder will be sent to France for analysis, the Associated Press reported.

Nepal has seen a number of air disasters over the years. Part of the problem is that the landlocked country is home to eight of the world’s 14 tallest mountains.

“The diversity of weather patterns along with the inhospitable topography pose the greatest challenges to flight operations in Nepal,” according to a 2019 safety report from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

The manufacturer of the crashed plane, ATR Aircraft, is headquartered in France. According to the company’s website, the first ATR 72 flew in October 1988.

Portal reported that nearly 350 people have died in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal since 2000. Bloomberg News reported that the European Union has banned all Nepal-based airlines from its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.

A crash in the Himalayas in May killed 22 people aboard a twin-propeller plane operated by Tara Air, a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines.

Authorities said on January 16 there were “no survivors” of the plane crash in Nepal. At least 69 of the 72 people on board have been located. (Video: AP)