Nepalese authorities have identified the wreckage of the plane that crashed in a mountainous region of the country on Sunday 29. The country’s Civil Aviation Authority said 14 bodies were recovered by a team that managed to reach near the crash by helicopter, but bad weather made the search difficult.
Nepalese authorities have identified the wreckage of the plane that crashed in a mountainous region of the country on Sunday 29. The country’s Civil Aviation Authority said 14 bodies were recovered by a team that managed to reach near the crash by helicopter, but bad weather made the search difficult.
There were 19 passengers, two Germans, four Indians and ten Nepalese, as well as three crew members on board. According to Pradeep Gauchan, a local official, the wreckage of the plane is at an altitude of about 3,800 to 4,000 meters.
“It is very difficult to get there on foot. A team was dropped off near the area by helicopter, but at the moment it is cloudy so further flights are not possible,” Gauchan told AFP. “Helicopters are waiting for the clouds to disperse,” he said.
The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that the plane “crashed” at an altitude of 4,420 meters in the Sanosware district of Thasang municipality in Mustang county. Details on the cause of the drop were not provided.
The twin-engine Twin Otter took off at 9:55 a.m. (local time) from Pokhara, the country’s second-largest city in the Midwest, on Sunday, after which it lost radio contact with the control tower. The device was on a 20-minute flight from Pokhara to Jomsom, a popular trekking area in the Himalayas.
hard to reach area
A photo shared on Twitter by Nepalese Armed Forces Spokesperson Narayan Silwal shows a plane wreck scattered over the mountain slope. The twin-engine registration number – 9N-AET – can be seen on what appears to be a wing piece.
Search efforts, which were suspended on Sunday night, resumed on Monday morning. Pokhara Airport spokesman Dev Raj Subedi said the searches traced GPS, cell phone and satellite signals to the crash site. According to the website of the Aviation Safety Network, the aircraft was manufactured by the Canadian company De Havilland and made its first flight more than 40 years ago in 1979.
Nepalese aviation has exploded in recent years, transporting tourism, climbers and cargo by road to remote and hard-to-reach areas.
Suspicious aviation security record
Nepal, a poor country in the Himalayas, has a dubious history of aviation safety due to inadequate training of pilots and inadequate maintenance of aircraft. The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from its airspace for safety reasons. The country also boasts some of the most dangerous slopes in the world, nestled amidst snow-capped peaks.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane from Bangladesh crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 51 people. The following year, three people were killed when an aerovave failed to take off and collided with two helicopters. The accident occurred at Lukla Airport, which is the gateway to Everest, known as one of the most difficult take-off and landing airports in the world.
The most serious accident in the country’s history occurred in 1992 when 167 people on a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu airport. Two months before this tragedy, a Thai Airways plane crashed in the same area, killing 113 people.
In May, Nepal’s second international airport opened in Bhairahawa to allow pilgrims from all over Asia to access the Buddha’s birthplace in nearby Lumbini. The $76 million project aims to alleviate traffic at Kathmandu International Airport.
With information from AFP
source: Noticias
