Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Feb 17: A preliminary probe report in the Yeti Airlines crash last month that killed 71 people, including five Indians leads investigators to suspect human error behind the deadly crash.
It is rare for the propellers of both engines to come to a feathered position, and data recorders recovered after the crash indicated ‘all recorded parameters related to engines did not show any anomaly’, said one of the members of five members probe committee.
The report indicated that ahead of landing one pilot may have accidentally operated levers that ‘feathered’ the engines – each lever starts/stops fuel supply and controls idling speed – instead of using the flaps, which caused the engines to lose thrust and the plane to fall.
The preliminary report states, “When both propellers were feathered, the investigation team observed that both of the engines of 9N-ANC were running flight idle condition during the event flight to prevent the torque.”
The report further says, when Air Traffic Controller (ATC) gave the clearance for landing at 10:57, the Pilot Flying(PF) told twice that there was no power coming from the engines.
The report also pointed out the weather as a possible concern, noting that visibility was 6 km at the time of the crash and the sky was almost clear with only a few clouds.
Moreover, a final report on the plane crash has not yet been released.
Notably, after taking off from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on January 15, Yeti Airlines flight 691 crashed on the Seti River canyon between the old airport and the new airport in the vacation city of Pokhara.
