The plane, with 72 people on board, crashed as it was about to land at Pokhara airport without the pilots “reporting any problems”, according to the authorities.
Rescue work continues in Pokhara, a region located in central Nepal, among the burned-out remains of the twin-engine plane that crashed this morning with 72 people on board while trying to land at the local airport. The Police have just confirmed the existence of 62 corpses that have been transferred to a hospital for identification. Throughout the morning, the balance of victims has fluctuated due to the imprecision of the data caused by the difficulties of the search. The aircraft has been completely destroyed in a ravine and the fire complicates the work of the emergency services. Apart from four crew members, fifteen people of foreign nationality (five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, one Irish, one French, one Australian and one Argentine) were traveling in the device, as well as six minors. Half a hundred passengers are of Nepali origin.
The twin-engine ATR 72, belonging to the Yeti Airlines company, had taken off from Kathmandu, 200 kilometers away, and crashed at around 10:30 a.m. (5:00 a.m. Spanish time) for reasons being investigated by a commission recently created by the authorities of aviation and the Government, which has decreed tomorrow’s day as national mourning. Pokhara Airport is a very popular destination for tourists and Himalayans heading to Annapurna and the remote Mustang region. The natural reserve includes half a dozen peaks above 7,000 meters. Official sources believe that Hindu hikers, mountaineers and pilgrims traveled on the device.
The first information indicates that the plane lost control when it was flying over a gorge between the new airport and the old one in Pokhara, it began to burn and broke in two when it fell to the ground. The remains have been scattered over a wide area of difficult access. Several witnesses have recorded huge columns of smoke coming from the fuselage. The director of the Tribhuvan airport, Premnath Thakur, explained that the aircraft “was in the process of preparing for landing” and, apparently, the pilots did not inform the control tower about “any problem with the plane. They were preparing to land.”
The weather was also good, “so you can’t blame the weather.” Thakur explained that there are visibility criteria without which the airport cannot open and the Pokhara airport “has been open since morning after meeting the standards.” The pilot of the crashed plane was a flight instructor.
This is the most tragic event in the country in recent years, after the accident that occurred in March 2018, where 51 people lost their lives precisely at the old Pokhara airport. Plane crashes are not uncommon in Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, as the weather can change suddenly, creating dangerous conditions.
According to a report by Nepal Civil Aviation, this brings the number of air accidents in Pokhara involving commercial domestic flights to 50. So far there have been 104 plane crashes in Nepal, with more than 850 fatalities in total, according to the local press. Helicopter accidents are not uncommon either, with 36 cases, as it is a common means of travel in mountainous areas. Pokhara has a notable traffic for the tourism and sports value of the Himalayas. Precisely because of the number of incidents that occur, the country has been sanctioned on several occasions by the European Union, which already in 2013 prohibited airlines from Nepal from accessing its territory. Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has convened an emergency cabinet following the accident.
Air crashes in Nepal
2023: The provisional figure brings the number of deaths in the last accident to 40, although the authorities do not rule out an increase, since the plane has been broken into pieces.
2022: May. Sixteen Nepalis, four Indians and two Germans died in a De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter plane that crashed 15 minutes after takeoff from Pokhara.
2019: February. A helicopter crashed in bad weather in eastern Nepal, killing all seven people on board, including the tourism minister.
2018: March. Fifty-one of the 71 people on a Bangladeshi passenger plane have died after crashing as it was about to land at the hill-ringed airport in the Nepalese capital.
2016: February. Two people have died after a small plane crashed in the Kalikot district of western Nepal. Two days earlier, 23 people died in another crash on a flight from Pokhara.
2014: February. Bad weather caused a plane to crash, killing 18 people on board.
2012: September. 19 people died after another plane crash.