At least 68 people died on Sunday when a domestic flight crashed in Pokhara, the Nepal Civil Aviation Authorityin the worst plane crash in three decades in the small nation of Himalayas.
Hundreds of rescuers were scrambling the hillside where the Yeti Airlines flight, carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu, crashed.
Local television showed rescuers among the wreckage of the aircraft. Part of the land near the place of the accident was calcined, with visible flames.
The accident is the deadliest in Nepal since 1992, according to the Aviation Safety Network database, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside on approach to Kathmandu, killing 167. people who were on board.
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The plane made contact with the airport from the Seti Gorge at 05:05 GMT, the aviation authority said in its statement. “Then it crashed.”
The police officer Ajay KC He said rescue teams were having difficulty reaching the scene, in a gorge between two hills near the resort town’s airport.
Half of the plane is on the hillside,” said Arun Tamu, a local resident, who told Reuters he arrived at the scene minutes after the plane went down. “The other half has fallen into the Seti River gorge.”
Khum Bahadur Chhetri said that he watched from the roof of his house as the plane approached, and highlighted in dialogue with Reuters that local residents took two passengers to a hospital.
Nearly 350 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal – home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest – where sudden changes in weather can create dangerous conditions.
Among the passengers of the ATR 72 twin-engine plane were three babies and three children, according to the statement from the Civil Aviation Authority. Also an Argentine, five Indians, four Russians, an Irishman, two South Koreans, an Australian and a Frenchman.
The journey from the capital to Pokhara, Nepal’s second-largest city nestled beneath the picturesque Annapurna mountain range, is one of the most popular tourist routes in the Himalayan country, where many prefer a short flight rather than a six-hour journey over mountainous roads.
airport spokesman Pokhara, Anup Joshi said that the plane crashed while approaching the scene and added that “was flying at 12,500 feet and was in normal descent“. The weather on Sunday was clear.
Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said on Twitter that the Yeti Airlines plane was 15 years old and equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data. He added that the last signal was received at 05:12 GMT at an altitude of 2,875 feet above mean sea level.
Pokhara Airport is located at about 2,700-2,800 feet above mean sea level, according to FlightRadar24.
The ATR72 from European aircraft manufacturer ATR is a widely used twin-turboprop aircraft, manufactured by a joint venture of Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo. Yeti Airlines it has a fleet of six ATR72-500 aircraft, according to its website.
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