New Delhi: A passenger plane of Yeti Airlines with 72 people, including five Indians, crashed into a river gorge while landing at the newly-opened airport in the resort city of Pokhara, killing at least 68 people onboard.
Yeti Airlines' 9N-ANC ATR-72 aircraft took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am and crashed on the bank of the Seti River between the old airport and the new airport minutes before landing, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
The accident took place on Sunday, the Himalayan nation's deadliest aviation accident in over 30 years.
According to Nepal’s civil aviation body, 914 people have died in air crashes in the country since the first disaster was recorded in August 1955.
The Yeti Airlines tragedy in Pokhara on Sunday is the 104th crash in Nepali skies and third biggest in terms of casualties.
Nepal has had a fraught record of aviation accidents, partly due to its sudden weather changes and airstrips located in hard-to-access rocky terrains.
Sunday’s accident was the third-deadliest crash in the Himalayan nation’s history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network.
The only incidents in which more people were killed took place in July and September 1992. Those crashes involved aircraft of Thai Airways and Pakistan International Airlines and left 113 and 167 people dead, respectively.
The last major air accident in Nepal happened on May 29 when all 22 people onboard, including four members of an Indian family, were killed as a Tara Air plane crashed in Nepal's mountainous Mustang district.
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.
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