Lagatar24 Desk
Pokhra, Jan 16: A Yeti Airlines plane with 68 passengers and four crew members departed from Kathmandu and crashed near Pokhra International Airport on Sunday. As rescue workers continue to search for the bodies, details on why the crash happened aren’t out yet.
Meanwhile, a BBC report has also suggested that the pilot of the flight that crashed in Nepal did not report ‘anything untoward’ as the plane approached the airport.
Airport spokesperson Anup Joshi, while talking to BBC has said that the “mountains were clear and visibility was good”, adding there was a light wind and “no issue with the weather”.
Also Read: Nepal plane crash: Black box found as videos of last moments surface
Notably, there were 72 passengers and crew aboard the Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu to the tourist town of Pokhara which crashed on Sunday. No one is believed to have survived. It is the country’s deadliest plane crash in 30 years.
On Monday, fragments of the Yeti Airlines plane were scattered across the riverbank, on both sides, like pieces of a broken toy. One portion of the aircraft lay on its side, the windows still intact. A few metres away, blue airline seats, now mangled. The thick stench of smoke hung in the air, the scorched grass on the bank a reminder of the fireball that engulfed the aircraft after it crash landed.
Mobile phone footage showed the plane rolling sharply as it approached the runway. It then hit the ground in the gorge of the Seti River, just over a kilometre from the airport.
The pilot asked for a change from the assigned runway 3 to runway 1, which was granted by the airport, Joshi said.
“We could operate from both runways. The plane was cleared for landing.” It was “very unfortunate” that the incident happened just 15 days after the airport had opened for business, he told the BBC.
On the other hand, on the day of the crash, the pilot took permission for landing from Air Traffic Control (ATC) and a nod was given for the same. But the civil aviation authority later said flames were seen in the plane just before the crash, further indicating the aircraft might have caught fire mid-air.
The images from the crash site showed flames on the ground and black smoke billowing into the sky from debris strewn across the crash site. All passengers are feared dead.
As members of Nepal’s police scoured through the wreckage, they informed they had found the black box flight recorder. The voice recorder has also been recovered. They have given up hope of finding any survivors. Now the focus was on finding any clues as to how this tragedy happened.
The Nepal government has formed a five-member probe committee to investigate the accident. It has also directed that every domestic airline’s aircraft undergo rigorous inspections before taking a flight.
