A plane went down on Wednesday just after taking off from the capital of Nepal, wounding one pilot and killing eighteen others. The pilot was the only one to survive.
According to Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, everyone but one passenger on the Saurya Airlines flight were Nepalese nationals. The sole exception was a Yemeni passenger. According to police spokesman Basanta Rajauri, all 18 bodies have been recovered from the debris.
The majority of the people on board the Bombardier CRJ 200 were either airline workers or technicians. The jet was en route to Pokhara, the second-most-populated city in Nepal, for maintenance work.
A physician at Kathmandu Medical College Hospital, where the pilot is receiving treatment, stated that the pilot’s life is not in imminent danger despite eye damage.
The jet departed from the Kathmandu airport at 11:11 a.m. local time, made a right turn, and then crashed shortly after in the airport’s eastern portion.
Though it is often rainy during the monsoon season in Kathmandu, the incident occurred when skies were clear of precipitation, but visibility was poor all throughout the nation’s capital.
The trip violated civil aviation regulations, according to Sanjiv Gautam, the former head of Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority. In an interview, Gautam stated that planes being transported overseas for maintenance cannot carry passengers, even airline personnel.
The aviation safety record in Nepal is dismal, with many fatal disasters in the past few years. Two plane crashes claimed the lives of 72 people: one in January 2023 at Pokhara on Yeti Airlines and another in March 2018 at Tribhuvan International Airport on US-Bangla Airlines.
For safety reasons, the European Union has barred all Nepalese airlines, including Saurya Airlines, from entering the 27-nation EU.
Critics say corruption and inefficiency plague the aviation business.