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Nepalese rescuers on Monday recovered 16 bodies from the mutilated remains of a plane that crashed in the Himalayas with 22 other people on board.
Air traffic lost contact with the Twin Otter plane operated through Nepalese airline Tara Air shortly after taking off from Pokhara in western Nepal on Sunday morning for Jomsom, a popular hiking destination.
After resuming service on Monday, the army shared on social media a photo of aircraft parts and other debris strewn across a steep mountain, adding a wing with the registration number 9N-AET obviously visible.
“So far, 16 bodies have been discovered and the groups are for the other six. The chances of survival are low, but our efforts continue to locate them,” Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Deo Chandra Lal Karn told AFP.
About 60 other people were running toward the crash site, in addition to the army, police, mountain guides and locals, most of whom walked miles to get there.
The authority said the aircraft “had an accident” at 14,500 feet (4,420 meters) in Thasang’s Sanosware Township in Mustang District.
“Analyzing the images we received, it turns out that the flight did not catch fire. Everything is scattered around the site. The flight appears to have collided with a giant rock on the hill,” Pokhara airport spokesman Dev Raj Subedi said.
On board were four Indians, as well as two Germans, the rest of the Nepalese plus a computer engineer, his wife and two daughters who had just returned from the United States.
The four Indians were a divorced couple and their daughter and son, aged 15 and 22, were on holiday in a circle of relatives, Indian police officer Uttam Sonawane told AFP.
“There was a court order for (the father) to spend time with the circle of relatives for 10 days each year, so they were going on a trip,” Sonawane said.
Pradeep Gauchan, a local official, said the remains were difficult to overcome and bad weather made the operation difficult.
“A team fell near the domain via helicopter, but at the moment it is cloudy, so flights were not possible,” Gauchan told AFP earlier in the day.
“The helicopters are waiting for the clouds to dissipate,” he said. According to the Aviation Safety Network website, the aircraft manufactured through Canadian de Havilland and made its first flight more than 40 years ago in 1979.
– Past injuries –
Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, a national airline serving many remote destinations in Nepal.
It suffered its last fatal crash in 2016 on the same road when a plane with 23 other people on board crashed into the mountainside in Myagdi district.
Nepal’s airline industry has exploded in recent years, transporting goods and other people between hard-to-reach spaces, as well as foreign hikers and mountaineers.
But it has long been plagued by poor security due to improper maintenance.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for protection reasons.
The Himalayan country also boasts some of the most remote and challenging tracks in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even to experienced pilots.
Weather can also temporarily replace in the mountains, creating harmful flight conditions.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu’s notoriously complicated international airport, killing another 51 people and seriously injuring 20.
The crash was the deadliest in Nepal since 1992, when the other 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it crashed on the way to Kathmandu airport.
Just two months earlier, a Thai Airways plane crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.
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