Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said on Twitter that a Yeti Airlines passenger plane crashed on Sunday morning. The minister said that the plane was going from Kathmandu, the capital, to Pokhara, a city in the middle of Nepal.
Flightradar24, which tracks flights, says that the plane for Yeti Airlines flight YT691 was a 15-year-old ATR 72-500, a twin-engine turboprop airliner.
“This aircraft was equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data,” the flight tracker said. “We are downloading high-resolution data and verifying the data quality.”
The plane left Kathmandu on time at 10:32 a.m. local time, and according to the flight tracker, it should arrive at 10:59 a.m. The trip took about 24 minutes on average to fly.
#Nepal
72 passengers were on board. Plane crash at Pokhra International Airport. pic.twitter.com/igBoObcCDm— Aishwarya Paliwal (@AishPaliwal) January 15, 2023
The plane can hold a maximum of 78 people, according to the company that made it. A spokesman for Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, Sudarshan Bartaula, said that four crew members and 68 passengers were on board the ATR-72 plane when it crashed.
The country’s civil aviation authority said that 53 of the passengers and all four crew members were from Nepal. There were also 15 people from outside the country on the plane. Five of them were from India, four were from Russia, and two were from Korea. The rest were people from Australia, Argentina, France, and Ireland who lived on their own.
Have a look at:
- British-Iranian Citizen Alireza Akbari’s Execution by Iran is Condemned by the UK
- Lisa Marie Presley Died From COVID-19 Vaccine? Report Revealed
Tek Bahadur K.C., the chief district officer of Kaski, said that the district police and the district administration office are working on a rescue operation. They hope to save at least a few people. He said that there were 32 dead bodies in Gandaki Hospital right now.
The plane was flying from Kathmandu, the country’s capital, to Pokhara, which is about 80 miles west of the capital. This was reported by The Rising Nepal, the country’s official news outlet.
Horrifying last moments of an ATR plane crash from Nepal in Pokhara that was bound for Kathmandu. All 72 people on board are dead. pic.twitter.com/4JZIvnThPQ
— Wajahat Kazmi (@KazmiWajahat) January 15, 2023
Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said that he was “deeply saddened by the sad and tragic accident.” “I sincerely appeal to the security personnel, all agencies of the Nepal government and the general public to start an effective rescue,” Dahal said on Twitter.
Nepal is in the Himalayas and has eight of the world’s 14 tallest mountains, including Everest. There have been a number of air accidents in Nepal. The weather there can change quickly, and most airstrips are in hard-to-reach mountainous areas.
Follow us only on Lee Daily for more news like this.