68 Confirmed Dead After Plane Crashes In Central Nepal: As rescuers searched the debris on the brink of the cliff and in the ravine below, hundreds of rescue workers and onlookers gathered along a steep gorge outside a resort town in central Nepal where a regional passenger jet crashed Sunday.
According to a tweet from the nation’s Civil Aviation Authority, 68 people have been confirmed deceased so far after a regional passenger plane carrying 72 people fell into a canyon while making a landing at a recently completed airport in the vacation town of Pokhara. It is the nation’s deadliest aviation incident in the last three decades.
The organization stated that four persons were still missing. 53 passengers were Nepalese, 5 were Indian, 4 were Russian, 2 were Korean, 1 was from Australia, 1 was from Argentina, 1 was from Ireland, and 1 was from France, according to the agency. Four crew members were present.
What caused the accident was not immediately apparent.
From the terrace of his home, a witness claimed to have seen the aircraft whirling erratically in the air when it started trying to land. According to Gaurav Gurung, the plane made a nose-first descent to its left before crashing into the gorge.
Rescuers used fire hoses to saturate the accident site near the Seti River, which is about 1.6 kilometers (almost a mile) from Pokhara International Airport, then hoisted cables down to another burning portion of the wreckage below. Firefighters transported some severely charred bodies to hospitals where grieving family members gathered.
Family members were brought into the airport in Kathmandu looking upset as they did so, and as they waited for information, they occasionally got into intense arguments with staff members.
“The plane caught fire after the crash. There was smoke everywhere,” Gurung said.
According to the aviation authority, the plane crashed at 10:50 a.m. after touching the airport close to Seti Gorge.
The twin-engine ATR 72 plane was making the 27-minute journey from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara. It was being flown by Yeti Airlines. There are no survivors still at large. The airline said on Sunday that all regular flights would be canceled on Monday.
Senior administrative officer for the Kaski district, Tek Bahadur K. C., predicted that rescuers would discover more bodies at the bottom of the gorge.
Tweeted images and videos showed smoke plumes rising from the crash site as rescuers, the Nepali army, and large groups of locals gathered around the airplane wreckage to search for survivors. The airplane’s fuselage was broken into several pieces and dispersed around the gorge.
After the tragedy, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal hurried to the airport and formed a team to investigate what happened.
“The incident was tragic. The full force of the Nepali army and police have been deployed for rescue,” he said.
The foreign ministry of South Korea stated that it has dispatched staff to the scene and is still working to ascertain the fate of two South Korean passengers. According to Alexei Novikov, the Russian ambassador to Nepal, four Russian people on board the plane died.
Many airlines worldwide have employed the ATR 72, the kind of aircraft in question, for brief regional flights. The aircraft model was introduced in the late 1980s by a French and Italian partnership, and over the years, it has been in many fatal incidents. All 65 people on board an ATR 72 operated by Iran’s Aseman Airlines perished in a mountainous, foggy area in 2018.
For any queries, contact our customer service at 015970074. pic.twitter.com/bTiMKGg8BJ
— Yeti Airlines (@FlyYeti) January 15, 2023
Two accidents involving ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600 aircraft occurred in Taiwan just a few months apart.
48 persons were killed when a TransAsia ATR 72-500 plane crashed in July 2014 as it attempted to land on the picturesque Penghu island between Taiwan and China. In February 2015, an ATR 72-600 being flown by the same Taiwanese airline crashed shortly after takeoff in Taipei after one of its engines broke down and the second one was inadvertently turned off.
43 people were killed in the 2015 tragedy, which was seen in a dramatic video showing the plane slamming into a cab as it spiraled out of control. The crash forced officials to ground all ATR 72s with Taiwanese registrations temporarily. In 2016, TransAsia terminated all operations, and the company later closed.
In a tweet, ATR revealed that the aircraft that crashed on Sunday was an ATR 72-500. The plane was 15 years old and “fitted with an obsolete transponder with poor data,” per flightradar24.com tracking information. According to data on Airfleets.net, it was formerly operated by Thailand’s Nok Air and India’s Kingfisher Airlines before Yeti took over in 2019.
Six ATR72-500 aircraft are in the fleet of Yeti Airlines, according to company spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula.
The starting point for the famed Himalayan hiking circuit known as the Annapurna Circuit is Pokhara, which is situated 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Kathmandu. Only two weeks ago did, the city’s brand-new international airport open for business. It was constructed with Chinese labor and funding. Chen Song, the Chinese ambassador to Nepal, tweeted that he was “extremely startled” to hear about the incident.
“At this difficult time, our thoughts are with Nepali people. I want to express my deep condolences to the victims and sincere sympathies to the bereaved families,” he wrote.
The accident on Sunday is the deadliest in Nepal since 1992, when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed into a hill attempting to land in Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.
Eight of the world’s fourteen highest mountains, including Mount Everest, are in Nepal, with a history of plane disasters. Since 1946, 42 fatal aviation crashes have occurred in Nepal, according to the Aviation Safety database maintained by the Flight Safety Foundation.
In Nepal, a plane tragedy last year claimed the lives of 22 individuals. In 2016, a Tara Air Twin Otter carrying 23 passengers from Pokhara to Kathmandu crashed shortly after takeoff.
In 2012, a jet operated by Agni Air that was headed from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed, killing 15. Six people made it. All 18 passengers on a Nepal Airlines flight from Pokhara to Jumla perished in a collision in 2014.
When a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed into a mountainside while attemptin23g to land in Kathmandu in 1992, all 167 people perished.
Since 2013, the European Union has prohibited Nepali airlines from operating flights into the 27-nation bloc, alleging lax safety regulations. Improvements in Nepal’s aviation industry were noted by the International Civil Aviation Organization in 2017, although the EU is still pressing for administrative changes. Follow Techyember.com for more information. You can also leave your thoughts in the comment section, and don’t forget to bookmark our website.
