KATHMANDU, May 31: The bodies of 22 people, including four Indians, killed in the plane crash in Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district on Sunday, have been brought to Kathmandu where the mortal remains would be handed over to their families after the post-mortem on Tuesday.
The Canadian-built turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane was carrying four Indians, two Germans and 13 Nepali passengers, besides a three-member Nepali crew when it crashed minutes after taking off from the tourist city of Pokhara, officials said.
Rescuers on Monday recovered 21 bodies from the wreckage site of the plane belonging to Tara Air. On Tuesday, the last body was also retrieved from the wreckage site.
Tara Air has identified the four Indian victims as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy) and their children Dhanush and Ritika. The family was based in Thane city near Mumbai.
According to Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) General Manager Prem Nath Thakur, the bodies of 10 victims were brought on Monday evening and the bodies of the remaining 12 were brought here by a Nepal Army helicopter on Tuesday.
All the bodies have been sent to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital for post-mortem examinations. The bodies will be handed to the families Oof the victims after the post-mortem, the official said.
The black box of the plane was also retrieved by a team of experienced international and national mountain guides from the crash site on Tuesday and it will be transported to Kathmandu.
The black box, also known as the cockpit voice recorder, records radio transmissions and other sounds in the cockpit, such as conversations between the pilots, and engine noises.
The modern planes have two black boxes that includes the flight data recorder which records more than 80 different types of information such as speed, altitude and direction, as well as pilot actions and performance of important systems.
The black box could offer vital clues about the crash in which all 22 people on board were killed.
The government has formed a five-member commission of inquiry headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman to find out the cause of the Tara Air plane crash, officials said.
Meanwhile, the government has tightened flight permit rules for airlines by making it mandatory to have clear weather throughout the route, after the preliminary investigation indicated that bad weather was the main cause of Sunday’s plane crash.
So far, Nepal’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), has been issuing permits to airlines if weather conditions at the source and destination airports are okay. But, from now onwards, the en-route weather conditions of the flight will also be looked into.
Nepal being a mountainous country, the weather condition is always fluctuating and it is difficult to operate a flight in the mountain region without proper weather forecasting mechanism. The new provision is applicable to all flights following the Visual Flight Rules.
Earlier Tuesday, authorities resumed their search operation to retrieve the last body, a day after rescuers recovered 21 bodies from the wreckage site. The last dead body was recovered from the accident site.
Due to the geographical remoteness and adverse weather conditions, the search and the recovery mission were delayed. The plane was found scattered at an altitude of 4,200 metres, a four-hour uphill hike from the centre of Thasang Village Municipality.
The photo posted on the social media site shows the tail and one wing of the aircraft remain intact.
Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, has a record of air accidents.
In 2016, all 23 people aboard were killed when a plane of the same airline flying the same route crashed after takeoff.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla Air crash occurred at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 51 people on board.
A Sita Air flight crashed in September 2012 while making an emergency landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.
A plane flying from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed near Jomsom airport on May 14, 2012, killing 15 people.
Tara Air is the newest and biggest airline service provider in the Nepalese mountains, according to the airline’s website. It started its business in 2009 with the mission of helping develop rural Nepal. (PTI)
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