Kathmandu.- A helicopter in which five Mexican tourists were traveling, in addition to the pilot, crashed on Tuesday in the Everest region of Nepal, he said to an official source, without the status of the people on board being known for the moment.
“Local people have discovered the crashed helicopter,” Likhu Pike Municipality Vice President Nwang Lhakpa Sherpa said, adding that authorities have launched a search and rescue operation.
Six people were traveling in the helicopter, five Mexican tourists and the pilot, who belonged to Manang Air, the operations and security manager of the Nepalese company, Raju Neupane, explained to EFE.
According to Neupane, authorities lost contact with the aircraft this morning.
The accident took place in the northern district of Solukhumbu, where Mount Everest is located.
Nepal, where air accidents occur with some frequency, has been the subject of repeated international sanctions for the lack of controls.
The European Union (EU) has banned access to its territory for Nepali airlines since 2013.
In February 2019, seven people died after a helicopter with seven passengers on board crashed, including the Nepali Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation, Rabindra Adhikari.
The accident took place just months after another Altitude Air helicopter crashed in a jungle area in the Gorkha district of northern Nepal, killing six people, including the pilot, while a passenger survived.
The worst plane crash in recent years in Nepal occurred in January 2023, when a Yeti Airlines flight crashed with 72 travelers leaving no survivors, an accident attributed by authorities to human error.
