Nepal says bodies of all 22 victims of Himalayan mountainside plane crash recovered, voice recorder found
- Two Germans, four Indians and 16 Nepalis were on the De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter aircraft which crashed 15 minutes after take off on Sunday morning
- Nepali government set up a panel to determine the cause of the crash and suggest preventive measures for the aviation sector
Nepali search and rescue teams on Tuesday recovered the body of the last of 22 people aboard a small plane that crashed in the Himalayas two days earlier and also found the flight’s voice recorder.
“Rescuers have recovered all 22 bodies from the crash site,” Deo Chandra Lal Karna, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) told Reuters.
“Nothing except the wreckage is left at the crash site now,” Karna said. “All the bodies and the black box have been recovered.”
Nepali soldiers and rescuers had retrieved 21 bodies from the wreckage, strewn across a steep slope on Monday. They recovered the last body on Tuesday morning, Karna said.
Two Germans, four Indians and 16 Nepalis were on the De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter aircraft which crashed 15 minutes after taking off from the tourist town of Pokhara, 125km (80 miles) west of Kathmandu, on Sunday morning.
The wreckage was found a day later strewn across a mountainside at around 14,500 feet (4,420 metres).
Modern planes have two such “black boxes” – a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder.
Search paused for Nepal plane missing in mountains with 22 on board
The Tara Airlines plane was bound for Jomsom, a popular tourist and pilgrimage site, 80km (50 miles) northwest of Pokhara, on what should have been a 20-minute flight when it lost contact with air traffic control.
The flight is considered a particularly accident-prone route, even in the context of Nepal’s poor track record on air safety. At least 74 people have died on the route in five plane crashes since 1997, according to the Nepali Times.
Bodies of 10 victims were brought to Kathmandu on Monday, and the remaining 12 bodies would be flown into the capital on Tuesday, the CAAN official said.
“The bodies will be sent to the [Tribhuvan University] Teaching Hospital for postmortem … and will be handed over to the families after identification,” Karna said. The names of the victims were released on Sunday.
Police said rescue efforts took longer than expected due to bad weather and difficult terrain.
The Nepali government has set up a five-member panel to determine the cause of the crash and suggest preventive measures for the aviation sector.
Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, has a history of air accidents.
In early 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka to Kathmandu crashed on landing and caught fire, killing 51 of the 71 people on board.
In 1992, all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it ploughed into a hill as it tried to land in Kathmandu.
