(Photo : Borja Sanchez-Trillo/Getty Images)
Sixteen bodies of the 22 onboard a Tara Air flight that crashed were recovered by search and rescue teams, authorities said on Monday.
Sixteen bodies of the 22 onboard a Tara Air flight that crashed were recovered by search and rescue teams, authorities said on Monday.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal posted on Twitter that they are currently identifying the recovered bodies.
Prem Nath Thakur, the general manager of Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport, said that the search for the remaining passengers would continue despite the poor weather condition at the area where the plane crash happened.
"After all the passengers have been found, their bodies will be sent to Kathmandu," Thakur said.
The Nepali Army and Nepal Police continued their search operations Monday morning after being interrupted late Sunday due to a lack of light and adverse weather that hindered helicopters from flying into the area of the plane's last known position, as per a report from CNN.
"Lt Mangal Shrestha, a police inspector, and a Guide have already reached the site. Other rescue team members from different agencies are trying to reach the sites using small HCs. Every possible means to reach the site is being considered, " a Nepal Army spokesperson posted on Twitter.
According to an airport spokesperson, the wreckage was discovered at an altitude of roughly 14,500 feet. A gorge between two mountains is also being searched.
Flight Heading Nepal Tourism Site
The plane was traveling from Pokhara to Jomsom, a major tourist destination in central Nepal, when it lost communication with air traffic control approximately 12 minutes into the flight, according to Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority. The flight time between the two cities is about 20-25 minutes.
The mountain town of Jomsom is near the shared border of Nepal and Tibet. It is near the Muktinath temple, a well-known religious place for Hindus and Buddhists.
Nepalese home ministry official Binod B.K. said that, according to authorities, bad weather might have caused the Nepal Plane crash.
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Onboard, there were 19 passengers and three crew members. According to the government, the 22 persons on board include two Germans, four Indians, and 13 Neptali citizens. Two travelers' nationalities are unknown in the Nepal Plane Crash.
An airline official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the plane lost touch with the control tower five minutes before it was scheduled to land in Jomsom. Tara Air mostly operates Twin Otter turboprop planes built in Canada. The missing plane took its first flight in April 1979, per the flight tracking website Flightradar24.
Latest Crash Adds to Nepal's History of Aviation Disasters
Nepal has a long history of aviation disasters, which are generally caused by abrupt weather changes and airstrips situated in difficult-to-reach rocky terrain.
In 2018, per BBC, a US-Bangla airplane carrying 71 people from Dhaka, Bangladesh, caught fire while landing in Kathmandu in early 2018, killing 51 people.
In April 2019, three individuals died in a plane crash at Lukla Airport when the plane strayed off the runway and collided with a stationary chopper. The runway at Lukla is one of the most challenging to navigate.
Nepal's civil aviation industry was audited by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. The country scored below the global average in investigating accidents in 2017, as reported by the Washington Post.
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