Plane Crash In Nepal Kills All 23 Aboard

“The wreckage of the plane is scattered around 200 to 300 meters, and we are finding it hard to search the remaining bodies because it has started snowing”, said Lokendra Singh Guru, a police inspector leading the rescue team. The 18 people on board were killed. The plane was carrying 21 Nepali nationals, including two children, and two foreigners from China and Kuwait.

An image of the flight deck of a Twin Otter aircraft of Tara Air shows Captain Roshan Manhandar flying among the mountains of Nepal from Dolpo to Surkhet in February 2016.

It lost contact with the control tower shortly after taking off, an airport official said.

Sanjiv Gautam, the director general of Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, told the broadcaster he was “surprised” at the news, saying the weather had been clear and the plane was new. The plane, with a crew of three and 20 passengers, reportedly flew into the side of a mountain.

The plane caught fire after it crashed, according to a search and rescue team at the site of the accident.

Bishowraj Khadka, police chief of Myagdi district, said locals informed them about huge flames in Rupse area and said they were headed to it, the report added.

Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a privately-owned domestic carrier founded in 1998 which services many remote destinations across Nepal. Jomsom is the gateway for one of the most popular Himalayan trekking routes.

In May 2012, 15 people died when an Agni airplane crashed near the Jomsom airport while six made a miraculous escape due to complex geography. Nepal is still within the scope of the devastating quake in April 2015, has undergone several air disasters in recent years, which have worn blows to its tourism sector.

In 2014, a twin otter turboprop operated by the state-run Nepal Airlines – which had likewise taken off from Pokhara en route to Jomsom – crashed into a hillside, killing all 18 people aboard.

In Nepal, where the aviation industry has a poor safety record, many plane crashes have been blamed on bad weather, inexperienced pilots and inadequate maintenance.