A passenger plane with 22 people on board went missing in Nepal on Sunday, the operating airline and officials said, as poor weather hampered a search operation.
Nepal’s air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas as well as foreign trekkers and climbers, AFP reports. But it has a poor safety record. The Twin Otter aircraft operated by Tara Air took off from the western town of Pokhara bound for Jomsom at 9:55 am (0410 GMT) but air traffic control lost contact after 15 minutes.
“We are trying to locate the possible area where the aircraft might be,” Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesman for Tara Air, told AFP.
“Search and rescue teams from both the police and the army are heading towards that direction.”
He said there were 19 passengers on board and three crew members. The passengers included two Germans and four Indians, with the remainder Nepali, FRANCE24 reports.
Jomsom is a popular trekking destination in the Himalayas about 20 minutes by plane from Pokhara, which lies 200 kilometres (120 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu. Phanindra Mani Pokharel, a spokesman at the Ministry of Home Affairs, said two helicopters had been deployed for a search operation. But he said visibility was low.
“The bad weather is likely to hamper the search operation. The visibility is so poor that nothing can be seen,” Pokharel said.
Nepal’s aviation industry has long been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training and maintenance. The European Union has banned all Nepali airlines from its airspace over safety concerns.
The Himalayan country also has some of the world’s most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge for even accomplished pilots. The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu’s notoriously difficult-to-approach international airport, killing 51 people. The flight from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka crash-landed and skidded into a football field where it burst into flames.
Twenty passengers miraculously escaped the burning wreckage but sustained serious injuries.
An investigation found that the captain suffered an emotional breakdown during the flight, distracting the freshly qualified co-pilot who was at the controls when it crashed. The report said air traffic control also confused the two ends of the runway, but concluded this had no impact on the flight.
