At least 68 people died after a passenger jet crashed in central Nepal while attempting to land on a route popular with tourists trekking in the Himalayas.
A twin-engine Yeti Airlines aircraft, which was flying from Kathmandu to the city of Pokhara and had 72 people on board, began spinning sharply at a low altitude while coming in to land.
Video on social media showed the aircraft tilting heavily as it flew low above houses. Later, images from the ground showed burning debris and smoke rising from the crash site on a hillside in the gorge of the Seti River, several miles from Pokhara International Airport.
An army spokesman said they “expect to recover more bodies” as rescue operations continue and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Nepal’s prime minister, urged the general public to help with relief efforts.
Out of the 68 passengers and four crew on board, 53 are said to be Nepalese with a further 15 foreign nationals, including five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans and one passenger each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France.
Pokhara International Airport had only begun operations on Jan 1 and is the country’s third international airport, as it aims to boost trade and tourism.
More than 600,000 tourists visited Nepal in 2022 to seek adventure in its vast Himalayan mountain range and experience its spectacular cities.
Many will take the 30-minute flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara as the latter is the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit, a popular Himalayan hiking trail, as well as being a hub for extreme sports such as paragliding and bungee jumping.
The “weather was clear” and the immediate cause of the crash is unknown, said Jagannath Niroula, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.
But, Nepal has one of the worst aircraft safety records in the world and fatal crashes are commonplace, with the European Commission imposing a blanket ban on Nepalese airlines entering European airspace in 2013.
The ban came after a twin-engine Sita Air flight crashed outside of Kathmandu in 2012, killing everyone on board, including seven Brits.
There have been at least 27 aircraft crashes in Nepal over the past three decades and 20 of them have occurred over the last 10 years.
In May 2022, a Tara Air plane crashed in the mountainous Mustang district of Nepal, killing all 22 passengers on board, including German and Indian tourists.
Flying in Nepal is particularly dangerous because the weather can change suddenly in the Himalayas, resulting in low visibility; there is a lack of new aircraft and poor maintenance of existing planes; and airstrips are often situated in difficult-to-reach mountainous areas.
But, the country has a poor road network and so Nepalese and tourists alike are forced to rely on aircraft to travel around the remote Himalayan nation.
Tenzing-Hillary Airport in the northeastern town of Lukla, which serves as an entry point for those climbing Mount Everest, is considered to be the world’s most dangerous airport.
Hemmed in by the Himalayas, meaning landings have to be navigated by the pilot’s sight, it also has one of the world’s shortest runways which ends over a steep, vertical drop.
Yeti describes itself as a leading domestic carrier. Its fleet consists of six ATR 72-500s, including the one that crashed. It also owns Tara Air, and the two together offer the “widest network” in Nepal, the company says.
Yeti said it had cancelled all its regular flights for Monday in “mourning for the passengers who lost their lives”.
The ATR72 of European aircraft-maker ATR is a widely used twin-engine turboprop manufactured by a joint venture of Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo. Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR72-500 aircraft, according to its website.
“ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer,” ATR said in a statement.
Airbus and Leonardo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It was Nepal’s deadliest air crash since 1992, the Aviation Safety Network database showed, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside upon approach to Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.
Nearly 350 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal – home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest – where sudden weather changes can make for hazardous conditions.