Horror in the skies, 68 killed in Nepal crash

Kathmandu: At least 68 people were killed when a Nepalese passenger plane with 72 people onboard, including five Indians, crashed into a river gorge while landing at the newly-opened airport in central Nepal's resort city of Pokhara on Sunday in the country's deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.

Yeti Airlines' 9N-ANC ATR-72 aircraft took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am and crashed on the bank of the Seti River between the old airport and the new airport minutes before landing, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).

A total of 68 passengers and four crew members were on board the aircraft. The flight time between Kathmandu and Pokhara is 25 minutes. "So far, dead bodies of 68 people have been recovered from the crash site,” an official at the Search and Rescue Coordination Committee of the CAAN told PTI over the phone.

However, the dead bodies are yet to be identified, he added. Efforts are on to recover four more bodies, he said. Foreign nationals onboard the plane included five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans, an Australian, a French, an Argentine and an Israeli.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 claimed that the Yeti Airlines aircraft was 15 years old and equipped with an 'old transponder with unreliable data'. “The weather in Pokhara was absolutely fine and the engine of the aircraft was also in good condition,” he said.

“We don't know what has happened to the airplane,” he said. However, some local media reported that the aircraft took a wider turn while attempting to land, which may have caused the accident. It was a new airport built under a Chinese soft loan and inaugurated just two weeks ago.

According to Tek Bahadur KC, Chief District Officer of the Kaski district, the plane crashed into the Seti river gorge. Among the passengers were three infants, three children and 25 women. A police spokesman, said that there was a problem in the rescue due to the difficult terrain.