Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Jan16: The black box and cockpit voice recorder from the Yeti Airlines plane that crashed in Nepal have been located, as the country observed a day of mourning on Monday for the victims of its deadliest aviation disaster in three decades. Along with this, officials have also recovered a cell phone from the wreckage of the flight, which has apparently captured the final, very disturbing moments of the flight.
Earlier, a Kathmandu airport official Sher Bahadur Thakur had informed, “The black box of the crashed plane has been found.”
Notably, a black box is also known as a flight recorder. It is an electronic recording device in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents.
Teknath Sitaula, another Kathmandu Airport official, said the so-called black boxes were “in a good condition now. They look good from the outside.”
The development came after 68 people were confirmed to have been killed in the plane crash and police said they did not expect to find any more survivors.
Also Read: Nepal plane crash: Death toll rises to 67, five-member commission to probe
The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft from Kathmandu — which carried 72 people — crashed shortly before landing in Pokhara, a major tourist destination in the Himalayan nation. All 72 people including 68 passengers and four crew members are suspected to be dead.
The plane was carrying 68 passengers including 15 foreign nationals as well as four crew members. Five among the 15 foreign travellers were Indians.
The four Indians were from the Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh. The four victims including Abhishek Kushwaha, Vishal Sharma, Anil Kumar Rajbhar, and Sonu Jaiswal were residents of Alawalpur Village of Ghazipur district.
नेपाल प्लेन हादसे से पहले फेसबुक का लाइव वीडियो#NepalPlaneCrash pic.twitter.com/N7lyXS8HEV
— Dhyanendra Singh (@dhyanendraj) January 15, 2023
One of them, Sonu Jaiswal, was apparently doing a Facebook Live shortly before the flight crashed. He is among the dead. The same video is found on his Facebook account, which is unverified.
Abhishek Pratap Shah, a former MP of Nepal and Central committee member of the Nepali Congress, who sent the video footage, said that he received the footage from a friend and it was recovered on Monday from the wreckage.
The video, which is making the rounds of social media, opens with shots of passengers sitting inside the plane and the city below seen from the window as the plane circles before landing. Suddenly there is an explosion and the screen goes topsy-turvy. The final few seconds show a horrifying fire outside the window and cries of distraught passengers can be heard.
Another video from the ground captured the flight’s progress as it started landing. The plane suddenly tilted to the left, and turned upside down and reports say it then burst into a ball of fire.
Meanwhile, rescue operations resumed this morning at the crash site to trace four people who are still missing.
“Thirty-one (bodies) have been taken to hospitals,” police officials had earlier informed, adding that 36 other bodies were found in the gorge where the aircraft crashed. It was later informed that another body was recovered during rescue operations.
According to an airport official, there were 15 foreign nationals among the passengers, including five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, one Australian, one French, one Argentinian, and one person from Ireland.
According to Krishna Prasad Bhandari, the representative of the Nepal Army, “We haven`t rescued anyone alive from the crash site.” While making a landing at the recently opened airfield in Pokhara, Nepal, a Yeti Airlines passenger plane crashed into a river gorge. On board, 72 individuals, including five Indians, are thought to be dead. With dawn, the search and rescue effort is expected to get back up.
