Nepal plane mishap: Missing flight’s crash site discovered, rescue operations underway

The Nepali Army has physically located the Tara Airlines plane crash site in the country's Mustang district, its Spokesperson Brigadier General Narayan Silwal said on Monday.

The turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane had four Indian nationals, two Germans and 13 Nepali passengers besides a three-member Nepali crew.

“The search and rescue troops have physically located the plane crash site. Details will be followed,” Brig. Gen. Silwal said on Twitter. “Crash site: Sanosware, Thasang-2, Mustang,” he tweeted along with a picture of what appears to be the wreckage of the aircraft.

The fate of 22 people, including the four members of an Indian family, on board the Nepalese airlines plane remained unclear as bad weather made it difficult to locate the aircraft that went missing on Sunday morning in the mountainous region of the Himalayan nation minutes after taking off from the tourist city of Pokhara.

Nepal plane crash | Search and rescue teams by both the air and land are on their way to the crash site: Chief District Officer of Mustang, Netra Prasad Sharma to ANI

— ANI (@ANI) May 30, 2022

Patrol and search units from security forces, and groups of locals continued the on-foot search amid adverse weather conditions in the Dhaulagiri region, The Himalayan Times newspaper reported.

The Canadian-built plane was flying from the city of Pokhara to Jomsom, a popular tourist town in central Nepal. Flights between the two cities are usually 20-25 minutes long.

The condition of the plane belonging to Tara Air that took off at 10:15 am from Pokhara, nearly 200 kilometers east of Kathmandu, is unknown till now, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said in a statement.

The airline issued the list of passengers which identified four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy) and their children Dhanush and Ritika. The family was based in Thane city near Mumbai.

Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest, has a record of air accidents.

In 2016, all 23 people aboard were killed when a plane of the same airline flying the same route crashed after takeoff.

In March 2018, a US-Bangla Air crash occurred at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 51 people on board.

A Sita Air flight crashed in September 2012 while making an emergency landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.

A plane flying from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed near Jomsom airport on May 14, 2012, killing 15 people. Tara Air is the newest and biggest airline service provider in the Nepalese mountains, according to the airline website. It started business in 2009 with the mission of helping develop rural Nepal.

READ | Passenger plane carrying 22 people including 4 Indians goes missing in Nepal