Nepal Plane Crash: Officials were able to collect the bodies of 21 people by Monday night, but the effort was halted owing to bad weather. The operation to recover the last body was restarted on Tuesday morning.
Kathmandu: The bodies of all 22 people killed in a plane crash in Nepal’s hilly Mustang province have been retrieved, according to the country’s army. Officials have also recovered the Tara Air aircraft’s black box from the disaster site.
“The body of the last passenger has been discovered. Arrangements are being made to transport the remaining 12 bodies from the crash site to Kathmandu “Brigadier General Narayan Silwal, the Nepal Army’s spokesperson, sent out a tweet.
Officials were able to collect the bodies of 21 people by Monday night, but the effort was halted owing to bad weather. The operation to recover the last body was restarted on Tuesday morning.
Tara Air’s Canadian-built turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET jet crashed on Sunday while flying from Pokhara to Jomsom. There were 22 persons on board, including four Indians, three Japanese, two Germans, and three Nepalese crew members.
According to a preliminary report of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), bad weather was the main reason that led to the crash of the Tara Air plane. However, a five-member committee, headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, has been formed by the government to find out the exact cause of the crash.
“The adverse weather on Sunday could be the reason behind the accident,” former Director General of CAAN Raj Kumar Chhetri was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. “Our topography is mostly high hills and mountains, along with continuous changing wind and weather patterns causing difficulties for planes to maneuver around high terrains and in low visibility.”
Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, has a record of air accidents. In 2016, all 23 people aboard were killed when a plane of the same airline flying the same route crashed after takeoff.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Air crash occurred at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 51 people on board. A Sita Air flight crashed in September 2012 while making an emergency landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.
