crash on the river bank
The total number of dead has risen to 70 after one more body was recovered from the accident site in the gorge of Seti river in Pokhara Valley on Monday night, sources said. The Yeti Airlines plane took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10.33 am on Sunday and crashed minutes before landing on the banks of the Seti river between the old airport and the new airport in Pokhara.
There were 53 Nepalese passengers and 15 foreign nationals including five Indians and four crew members on board the aircraft. All five Indians are said to be from Uttar Pradesh and have been identified as Abhishek Kushwaha (25), Vishal Sharma (22), Anil Kumar Rajbhar (27), Sonu Jaiswal (35) and Sanjay Jaiswal. According to Yeti Airlines spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula, out of 70 bodies, 22 bodies are being handed over to the relatives after post-mortem.
relatives reached kathmandu
According to Nepal Army sources, 25 of the remaining 48 bodies, including crew members and foreign nationals, have already been brought to Kathmandu by Nepal Army helicopter and sent to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. He said that the other 23 bodies would soon be brought to Kathmandu by helicopter and sent to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. Bodies of foreign nationals will be handed over to family members or concerned diplomatic missions. Family members of four people from Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur who died in the accident have reached Kathmandu to collect their bodies.
Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the aircraft have been recovered. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) records radio transmissions and other sounds in the cockpit, such as conversations between pilots, and engine noise. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) records more than 80 different types of information such as speed, altitude and direction, as well as the pilot’s movements and critical systems performance.
Nepal Plane Crash: First husband’s life, pilot wife died while flying the same plane after 16 years, couple’s ‘murderer’ Yeti Airlines
clue from black box
Both the CVR and the FDR were handed over to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN). These may provide important clues about Sunday’s accident. Radio France Internationale reported that experts from the French accident investigation agency will arrive in Nepal on Tuesday to help authorities investigate the plane crash.
The plane that crashed was manufactured by France-based aircraft manufacturer ATR. Sunday’s crash was the third worst in Nepal’s history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network. Even more people were killed in accidents in July and September 1992. Those crashes involved Thai Airways and Pakistan International Airlines aircraft and killed 113 and 167 people, respectively.
biggest accident
The last major plane crash in the country was on May 29 last year when a Tara Air plane crashed in the mountainous Mustang district, killing all 22 people on board, including four members of an Indian family. In 2016, a plane of the same airline crashed while flying on the same route, killing all 23 people on board. In March 2018, 51 people died in a plane crash at Tribhuvan International Airport. In September 2012, a Sita Air plane crashed while making an emergency landing at Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.
