At least 68 bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of a Yeti Airline ATR72 that crashed a mile short of the runway at a newly opened airport in the resort city of Pokhara, Nepal, on Sunday. Video showed the aircraft possibly stalling and dipping its left wing before the crash. The turboprop twin was on a 27-minute flight from Kathmandu with 68 passengers and four crew. There were 15 foreign nationals among them. The weather was reportedly clear at the time of the crash, just before 11 a.m. local time.
The plane split into several pieces after hitting a gorge. The remaining bodies are expected to be found at the bottom of the gorge. The new airport has been open less than two weeks and airlines are currently transitioning their operations there from the other facility, which is two miles away. The new airport has an 8,200-foot concrete runway with a CAT 1 ILS and will accommodate single-aisle jets.
On Google Earth it looks like a big airport with a long runway. The wheels are down so it doesn’t look like a known problem while the aircraft is nose high and still turning at a very low height? Doesn’t look like a stabilized approach.
I’m hearing that the female copilot of the airplane lost her husband in a 2006 air crash in Nepal flying for the very same airline. She used insurance money from that accident to obtain her own pilot credentials in the US.
msn.com/en-us/news/world/tragic-twist-discovered-involving-co-pilot-in-nepal-plane-crash/vi-AA16pLJB?
Since 2000, there have been 33 air crashes in Nepal, 21 of them deadly. Looks like a good place to stay from.
I have operated in developing countries and can confirm that many things are still developing.
I am bewildered still to this day that pilots of air carriers stall out without some precipitating cause. I surely hope there is a root cause discovered other than poor pilot training for Yeti airlines.