A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said that a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder were recovered from the crash site of a passenger plane that crashed on approach to the newly opened airport in the tourist town of Pokhara.
Jagannath Niraula said the crates were found on Monday, a day after the crash of the ATR-72 plane, which killed 68 of the 72 people on board. He added that they’d be forwarded to investigators.
Pemba Sherpa, a spokesman for Yeti Airlines, also confirmed that each flight data and cockpit voice recorders were found.
Nepal kicked off a national day of mourning on Monday as rescuers descended a 984-meter-tall gorge to proceed their search. Two more bodies were found Monday morning.
It’s unclear what caused the crash, the deadliest aviation accident in the Himalayan country in three many years. On the day of the disaster, the weather was mild and windless.
A witness who recorded footage of the plane descending from his balcony said he saw the plane flying low before it suddenly turned left. “I saw it and I used to be shocked … I believed that today all the things will end here after it crashes, I’ll die too,” said Diwas Bohora. After it crashed, red flames erupted and the ground shook violently, as in an earthquake, Bohora said. “I used to be terrified. Seeing that scene scared me.”
One other witness said he saw the plane swerve sharply in the air after it began its descent, watching it from the terrace of his home. Finally, said Gaurav Gurung, the plane fell headfirst towards the left side and crashed right into a ravine.
Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said the plane last made contact with the airport near Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. before crashing.
The dual-engine ATR 72 aircraft, operated by Nepalese Yeti Airlines, competed in a 27-minute flight from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara, 125 miles to the west. There have been 68 passengers on board, including 15 foreigners, in addition to 4 crew members, Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a press release. The foreigners included five Indians, 4 Russians, two South Koreans, and one each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France.
Tons of of individuals gathered outside the Pokhara Academy of Health and Science, the West Hospital where the bodies are stored. Relatives and friends of the victims, a lot of whom were from Pokhara, consoled each other while they waited.
Bimala Bhenderi was waiting outside the mortuary hall on Monday. She was planning to satisfy her friend Tribhuban Paudel on Tuesday when she heard his plane had crashed. “I’m so sad, I still cannot imagine it,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Gyan Khadka, a spokesman for the district police, said that 31 bodies had been identified and can be handed over to the family after the autopsies were accomplished by officers. The bodies of foreigners and people who can’t be identified will likely be sent to Kathmandu for further examination.
On Sunday, Twitter was filled with images that showed plumes of smoke rising from the crash site, a few mile from Pokhara International Airport. The fuselage of the aircraft was divided into many parts, which were scattered in the ravine.
Several hours after dark, dozens of onlookers crowded the crash site near the airport in the resort of Pokhara as rescuers combed through the wreckage at the cliff’s edge and in the gorge below.
An area resident of Bishnu Tiwari, who rushed to the crash site near the Seti River to assist seek for bodies, said the rescue effort was hampered by thick smoke and a raging fire.
“The flames were so hot we couldn’t get near the wreck. I heard a person screaming for help but we couldn’t help him attributable to the flames and smoke,” Tiwari said.
At Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, members of the family appeared distraught as they waited for information.
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal rushed to the airport after the crash and arrange a panel to research the accident.
“The incident was tragic. The complete force of the Nepalese army and police has been sent to the rescue,” he said.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a press release it was still trying to substantiate the fate of the two South Korean passengers and had dispatched personnel to the site. Russia’s ambassador to Nepal Alexei Novikov confirmed the deaths of 4 Russian residents who were on board the plane.
Omar Gutiérrez, governor of the Argentine province of Neuquen, wrote on his official Twitter account that the Argentine passenger on the plane was Jannet Palavecino from his province.
Palavecino’s Facebook page says she was the manager of the Suizo Hotel in the city of Neuquen. She has described herself as a lover of travel and adventure tourism.
Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers told reporters on Monday that “our hearts exit to all the families of the crew and passengers” who died, adding that the government was providing consular support to the family of an Australian who was on board the plane.
Pokhara is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a preferred mountain climbing trail in the Himalayas. The town’s recent international airport began operating just two weeks ago.
The aircraft type in query, the ATR 72, was utilized by airlines around the world for brief regional flights. Introduced in the late Nineteen Eighties by a French-Italian company, the model aircraft has been involved in several fatal accidents over the years.
In Taiwan, two previous accidents involving ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600 occurred only a number of months apart.
In July 2014, a TransAsia ATR 72-500 crashed while attempting to land in the scenic Penghu Archipelago between Taiwan and China, killing all 48 people on board. An ATR 72-600 operated by the same Taiwanese airline crashed shortly after takeoff in Taipei in February 2015 after one in every of its engines failed and the other shut down, apparently by mistake.
The 2015 crash, captured in dramatic footage of a plane crashing right into a taxi because it spins uncontrolled, kills 43 people and prompted authorities to temporarily ground all 72 Taiwan-registered ATRs. TransAsia ceased all flights in 2016 12 months after which went bankrupt.
ATR identified the plane involved in Sunday’s crash as an ATR 72-500 in a tweet. In line with aircraft tracking data from Flightradar24.com, the aircraft was 15 years old and “fitted with an old transponder with unreliable data.” The plane was previously flown by India’s Kingfisher Airlines and Thailand’s Nok Air before Yeti took over in 2019, in keeping with Airfleets.net records.
Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR 72-500 aircraft, company spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said.
Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest, has a history of plane crashes. Sunday’s crash is Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines flight were killed when it crashed right into a hill while attempting to land in Kathmandu.
In line with the Flight Safety Foundation database, there have been 42 fatal aviation accidents in Nepal since 1946.
In line with a 2019 Nepal Civil Aviation Authority safety report, the country’s “hostile topography” and “various weather patterns” were the biggest threats to flights in the country. The report said such accidents occurred at airports that had short take-off and landing runways, and most of them were attributable to pilot error.
The report added that 37% of all aviation accidents in Nepal between 2009 and 2018 were attributable to pilot error, excluding helicopters and recreational flights.
Since 2013, the European Union has banned airlines from Nepal from flying to the bloc of 27, citing poor safety standards. In 2017, the International Civil Aviation Organization noted an improvement in the Nepalese aviation sector, but the EU continues to call for administrative reforms.