A passenger plane with 22 passengers on board has gone missing in Nepal, the operating airline and officials said, adding that the search fo...
A passenger plane with 22 passengers on board has gone missing in Nepal, the operating airline and officials said, adding that the search for the plane was hampered due to bad weather.
Nepal aviation industry has boomed in recent years, allowing access to foreign trekkers and climbers, including goods and people, in remote areas, but its safety record has been poor.
The twin-engine Tara Air flew from the western town of Pokhara to Jomsom at 9:55 a.m. local time, but lost control of air traffic control 15 minutes later.
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"We are trying to locate a possible area where the aircraft could be," said Tara Air spokesman Sudarshan Bhartola.
He said police and army search and rescue teams were heading in that direction, with 19 passengers and three crew members on board, two Germans and four Indians and the rest Nepalese.
Jomsom is a popular trekking destination in the Himalayas, about 20 minutes by plane from Pokhara, 200 km west of the capital Kathmandu.
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Home Ministry spokesperson Phanindra Mani Pokhral said that two helicopters have been dedicated for the search operation but he said that at present the visibility is low.
He said that due to bad weather, the search operation is likely to be hampered.
Poor record
Nepal's aviation industry has long suffered from poor security due to inadequate training and maintenance, and the European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from crossing its airspace due to safety concerns.
Nepal also has some of the most remote and difficult runways in the world, with snow-capped peaks that pose a challenge even for capable pilots.
The weather in the mountains can also change rapidly, creating dangerous conditions for flying.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane crashed near the infamous Kathmandu International Airport, killing 51 people.
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The flight from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, crashed and landed on a football field where it caught fire. Twenty passengers on the plane miraculously escaped the burning wreckage but were seriously injured.
The investigation revealed that the captain suffered emotional distress during the flight, which distracted the latest qualified co-pilot, who was in control at the time of the crash.
The report said air traffic control had confused both ends of the runway but had no effect on the flight.
The crash was Nepal's deadliest since 1992 when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane were killed when it crashed near Kathmandu airport, just two months later. Earlier, a Thai Airways plane crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.
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In 2019, 3 people died when a plane deviated from the runway and collided with 2 helicopters while taking off near Mount Everest.
The crash happened at Lukla Airport, the main gateway to the Everest region, and is considered one of the most difficult places in the world to land and take off.
In 2019, a helicopter crashed in Nepal mountainous east, killing seven people, including the country's tourism minister Rabindra Adhikari.
Nepal second international airport opens in Bhairahawa this month, aimed at giving Buddhist visitors from across Asia access to the Buddha birthplace near Lumbini, a 76 million project in Kathmandu. It will reduce the pressure on the international airport.
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