The bodies must be handed over to the next of kin after identification. The black box has been found and investigations into the cause of the crash are ongoing, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. The machine did not send an emergency call.
A video is circulating on social networks that one of the passengers will have filmed in the screening 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 people laughing on the plane and a view out the window. The landing approach looks calm, then suddenly fire can be seen.
According to dpa’s fact-checking team, the course of the flight, as far as it can be seen from the plane’s window, corresponds to 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 a friend of his and was wearing the same clothes as before the match.
With regional airlines as with the crashed machine, it is unusual worldwide to be allowed to use the mobile network during the flight, said Jan-Arwed Richter, founder and managing director of the Jacdec flight accident office in Hamburg, who maintains a database of worldwide air accidents. In the 1990s, cell phone use was banned on airplanes because of incidents where on-board electronics were affected by cell phone radio waves. None of these cases have been reported since the 1990s. Some airlines now allow in-flight mobile network use.
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 information, 53 passengers from Nepal were on board, in addition to Indians, Russians, South Koreans, Australians, Argentines, French and Irish. A spokesman for the Irish Foreign Office clarified that the Irish passenger was actually a British citizen.
Pokhara is the starting point for several Himalayan trekking tours, including the Annapurna massif, a popular hiking region.
Plane crashes are common in Nepal. This has to do with the fact that many of the highest mountains in the world are located there, including Mount Everest, and weather conditions can change quickly. From an EU point of view, the safety oversight of the Nepalese aviation authorities is not sufficient. For security reasons, Nepalese airlines are not allowed to fly in EU airspace. Yeti Airlines, for which the crash machine was in use, is on an EU blacklist due to safety concerns. Hardly a year goes by in Nepal without someone dying in a plane crash, said aviation accident expert Richter.
Last year, a passenger plane crashed on the Pokhara-Jomsom route, killing 22 people. And in an accident in 1992, an Airbus A300 B4 operated by Pakistan International Airlines crashed into a mountain on approach to 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 plane. The twin-engine ATR-72 machines are also in service in other parts of the world. According to the company, the Yeti Airlines fleet consisted of six aircraft of this type. French-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.