POKHARA, Nepal —
Nepali rescuers have retrieved the bodies of all but one of 22 people
on board a plane that crashed into a Himalayan mountainside over the weekend,
the army said Monday.
اضافة اعلان
Air traffic
control lost contact with the Twin Otter plane operated by Nepali carrier Tara
Air shortly after it took off from Pokhara in western Nepal on Sunday morning
headed for Jomsom, a popular trekking destination. Resuming a search on Monday
after failing to find any trace a day earlier, 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.
“Twenty-one bodies
have been recovered and teams are searching for the remaining one,” Nepal Army
spokesman Narayan Silwal told AFP. “It is a very difficult area to work. The
aircraft is several pieces scattered all over the slope,” a police official at
the crash site said.
About 60 people
were involved in the operation, including the army, police, mountain guides,
and locals, most of whom trekked uphill for miles on foot to get there. The civil
aviation authority said the plane “met an accident” at 14,500 feet 4,420m in
the Sanosware area of Thasang municipality.
“Analyzing 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 Nepalis including a
computer engineer, his wife, and their two daughters who had just returned from
the US. The four Indians were a divorced couple and their daughter and son,
aged 15 and 22, going on a family holiday, Indian police official Uttam
Sonawane told AFP. “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.
Past crashes
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.
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
EU has banned all Nepali airlines from its airspace over
safety concerns. 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.
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