NEW DELHI/LUCKNOW: A Nepalese passenger plane carrying 72 people on board crashed on Sunday seconds before its scheduled landing at Pokhara International Airport, Nepal, killing 68 passengers, including five Indians, authorities said. The accident is said to be the worst in the country in over three decades.
The Yeti Airways ATR-72 aircraft (9N ANC) crashed into a river gorge while landing at the newly-opened airport in central Nepal’s resort city of Pokhara, officials said. The aircraft took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am and crashed on the Seti river bank, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.
The five Indians were identified as Abhishekh Kushwaha, 25, Bishal Sharma, 22, Anil Rajbhar, 27, Sonu Jaiswal, 29, and Sanjaya Jaiswal, 28, a Yeti Airlines official said. Four of them belonged to UP’s Ghazipur. The four had arrived in Kathmandu on Friday. They were planning paragliding in the lake city Pokhara.
The other foreign nationals on board included four Russians, two Koreans and one Argentinian, Australian, Irish and French. The remaining 53 were Nepalese. The terrifying moments of the crash were captured on a video that went viral. Preliminary probes suggest technical reasons for the crash.
“Early indications point to a stall and VMC (visual meteorological conditions) roll. The VMC roll occurs primarily because a thrusting engine located on a wing decreases the stall speed significantly. Therefore, as airspeed decreases, a moment occurs when the wing with non-thrusting engines stalls, while the other wing continues to produce lift,’’ an aviation expert told this newspaper.
It was victim Sonu Jaiswal, 29, who was doing a Facebook live video when the crash took place. He was a liquor merchant and had shops in Ghazipur and Varanasi. Anil Rajbhar and Abhishek Kushwaha ran Jan Sewa Centres respectively at Zahoorabad and Alawalpur in Ghazipur while Vishal Sharma was a finance officer at a two-wheeler agency, said a police officer.
“Pained by the tragic air crash in Nepal in which precious lives have been lost, including Indian nationals. In this hour of grief, my thoughts and wishes are with the bereaved families,’’ said PM Narendra Modi while extending his condolences to his Nepalese counterpart Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Prachanda.
Deadliest disaster in 30 yrs
Yeti Airlines 9N-ANC ATR-72 aircraft took off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am.
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Crashed on the bank of Seti River between the old airport and the new airport minutes before landing. It was a new airport built under a Chinese soft loan and inaugurated two weeks ago
68 passengers and four crew members, including 5 Indians, 4 Russians, 2 Koreans, an Australian, a French, an Argentine and an Israeli, were on board the aircraft. Among the passengers were 3 infants, 3 children and 25 women
25 minutes: Flight time between Kathmandu & Pokhara
Weather in Pokhara was fine and aircraft engine was in good condition, Yeti Airlines said