A violent accident. A Kathmandu plane crashed in Nepal on Sunday with 72 passengers on board, killing at least 68 people. It is the deadliest accident in the country in 31 years.
• A “zero” hope of finding survivors
Yeti Airlines’ twin-engine ATR 72 is scheduled to land at Pokhara Airport in central Nepal on Sunday and has been in service since January 1. But it dove into a cave and crashed in the morning around 11:15 a.m. local time, 6:15 a.m. French time. It has 72 people on board, including 4 crew members.
At the scene of the accident, the emergency services discovered a burning corpse located at the bottom of a 300-meter ravine. Soldiers are still actively involved in the search Monday. So far 68 bodies have been found. However, the chances of finding survivors were declared “zero” on Monday by a senior local official.
• A Frenchman among the passengers
We still know little about the occupants of the aircraft. The airline said most of the passengers were Nepalis. 15 were of foreign nationality: five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, one Argentine, one Australian, one Irish and one French. According to Kathmandu Postthree infants and three children were on board.
The names of the passengers are still unknown, while 63 bodies have been sent to the hospital for identification so far, according to the local police chief.
• National mourning in Nepal
Nepal observes a day of national mourning on Monday in honor of the victims, the day after the accident. Nepalese Prime Minister Kamal Dahal visited the site of the tragedy.
Sunday’s disaster is the deadliest plane crash in Nepal since 1992. That year, a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed with 167 passengers on board. None had survived.
• The causes of the accident are still unknown.
One day after the tragedy, it is still early to determine the reasons for the accident. According to a spokesman, “visibility was good” at the time of the tragedy and there were “no problems with the weather,” the BBC reports. However, the pilot would have asked to land on a different runway than planned for unknown reasons.
A witness at the scene also told AFP that a “loud explosion” sounded, “as if a bomb had gone off.”
An investigation has been opened. And good news this Monday: the search services have found the black boxes of the plane. Visibly “in good condition”, according to a Kathmandu airport official, these black boxes contain the recording of cockpit voices and flight data.
• Recurring accidents in Nepal
Air disasters involving civil aircraft are recurrent in the country. If the area has developed in recent years due to the tourist boom in the region, which mainly attracts pilgrims and hikers, the pilots suffer from a lack of training. Aircraft maintenance is also considered insufficient.
All Nepalese airlines, including Yeti Airlines, are also blacklisted by the European Union and are therefore prohibited from flying over European airspace for safety reasons.
Another difficulty: Nepal does not have the necessary infrastructure to make accurate weather forecasts. Therefore, it is impossible for pilots to anticipate certain disturbances, particularly in remote mountainous regions, where the weather is particularly changeable. Airstrips are also considered dangerous, sometimes located near vertiginous peaks.
Source: BFM TV
