Kathmandu: Eighteen out of 19 people onboard were killed after an aircraft belonging to a private airline company crashed during takeoff at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Wednesday. The Pokhara-bound Saurya Airlines plane met with the accident at around 11 am.
"The pilot has been rescued and is being treated," he added. "Eighteen bodies have been recovered, including one foreigner. We are in the process of taking them for post-mortem," Nepali police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki told AFP. The nationality of the sole foreigner is not identified yet.
The plane was carrying two crew members and 17 technicians to Pokhara city for maintenance checks, Airport Security Chief Arjun Chand Thakuri said. "It (the plane) caught fire after skidding off the runway at Kathmandu airport and crashing into a field east of the runway," Thakuri said.
The pilot of the aircraft has been taken to a hospital, a security official deployed at the airport told PTI without giving further details. A fire that broke out from the aircraft has been put off, he added. Police and firefighters are carrying out rescue operations at the accident site.
Authorities have shut down the airport following the plane crash, the MyRepublica news portal reported. Dozens of international and domestic flights have been affected due to the airport closure
Saurya operates domestic flights in Nepal with two Bombardier CRJ-200 regional jets, both around 20 years old, according to Flight Radar 24. Nepal has been criticised for its poor air safety record, with the deadliest incident occurring in 1992, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus crashed into a hillside while approaching Kathmandu, killing 167 people. Most recently, at least 72 people were killed in a Yeti airlines crash in January 2023 that was later attributed to the pilots mistakenly cutting off power.
(With inputs from PTI, Reuters, AFP.)