Himalayas
Plane crash in Nepal: No survivors found
Rescue workers at the crash site. photo
© Yunish Gurung/AP/dpa
The cause of the plane crash that killed dozens in Nepal is still unclear. A passenger video circulating online is said to show the crash machine’s final horrifying moments.
No survivors were found the day after the plane crash in Nepal. So far, salvage teams have found the bodies of 69 of the 72 people on board. The wreck is in a 300 meter deep gorge in the city of Pokhara, as the coordinator of the rescue work told the German Press Agency. It is the worst air traffic accident in the poor country in three decades.
The bodies should be handed over to the relatives after identification. The black box had been found and investigations into the cause of the accident were ongoing, according to the Nepalese Civil Aviation Authority. The machine did not send an emergency call.
Fact check: circulating video
A video is circulating on social networks that one of the passengers is said to have filmed in the crashing machine. It is said to have been streamed as a Facebook video, showing the last minute and a half before the crash. You can see several laughing people on the plane and a view out of the window. The landing approach seems calm, then suddenly fire can be seen.
According to the dpa fact check team, the course of the flight, as far as it can be seen from the view from the plane window, corresponds to the official information. dpa also contacted a man whose name was on the official list of contact persons. He confirmed that one of the men in the video was his friend and was wearing the same clothes as before departure.
With regional airlines as with the crashed machine, it is unusual worldwide to be allowed to use the mobile network during the flight, said the founder and managing director of the Jacdec flight accident office in Hamburg, Jan-Arwed Richter, who maintains a database on worldwide aircraft accidents.
In the 1990s, the use of mobile phones on airplanes was banned because of incidents in which the on-board electronics were affected by the radio waves from mobile phones. However, no such cases have been reported since the 1990s. Some airlines now allow the use of the mobile network during the flight.
Crash on approach to land
The Nepalese Yeti Airlines machine crashed on Sunday morning on the half-hour flight between the capital Kathmandu and Pokhara on approach to land, according to the civil aviation authority. According to the information, there were 53 passengers from Nepal on board, as well as people from India, Russia, South Korea, Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland. A spokesman for the Irish Foreign Office then clarified that the Irish passenger was in fact a British citizen.
Pokhara is the starting point for numerous trekking tours in the Himalayas, including to the Annapurna massif, a popular hiking region.
Unsafe Nepalese airspace
Plane crashes are common in Nepal. This has to do with the fact that many of the world’s highest mountains are located there, including Mount Everest, and weather conditions can change quickly. From the EU’s point of view, the safety supervision of the Nepalese aviation authorities is not sufficient.
Because of safety concerns, Nepalese airlines are therefore not allowed to fly in EU airspace. The airline Yeti Airlines, for which the accident machine was in use, is on an EU blacklist due to safety concerns. Hardly a year goes by in Nepal without someone being killed in a plane crash, said air accident expert Richter.
Last year, a passenger plane crashed on the Pokhara-Jomsom flight route, killing 22 people, including 2 Hessians. And in an accident in 1992, an Airbus A300 B4 operated by Pakistan International Airlines crashed into a mountain as it was approaching Kathmandu because it was flying too low. None of the 167 occupants survived.
The plane that crashed was an ATR 72-500, a short-haul regional airliner. The twin-engine ATR-72 machines are also in service elsewhere in the world. According to the company, the Yeti Airlines fleet consisted of six aircraft of this type. The Franco-Italian company Avions de Transport Régional (ATR), a joint venture between Airbus and Leonardo, said it was supporting the investigation into the crash.
The Nepalese government declared Monday a national day of mourning in response to the accident.