RESCUERS have retrieved the bodies of 21 of the 22 people on board a plane that crashed into a Himalayan mountainside in Nepal over the weekend, said the army today.

Air traffic control lost contact with the Twin Otter plane operated by Nepali carrier Tara Air shortly after it took off from Pokhara headed for Jomsom, a popular trekking destination, yesterday morning.

Resuming a search today after failing to find any trace a day earlier, the army shared a photo of aircraft parts and other debris littering a sheer mountainside, including a wing with the registration number 9N-AET, on social media.

“Twenty-one bodies have been recovered and teams are searching for the remaining one,” said Nepal Army spokesman Narayan Silwal.

“It is a very difficult area to work. The aircraft has several pieces scattered all over the slope,” said a police official at the crash site.

About 60 people are involved in the operation, including the army, police, mountain guides and locals, of whom most trekked uphill for miles on foot to get there.

The civil aviation authority said the plane “met an accident” at 4,420m in Sanosware of the municipality of Thasang.

“Analysing the pictures we received, it seems that the flight did not catch fire. Everything is scattered in the site,” said Pokhara Airport spokesman Dev Raj Subedi.

“The flight seems to have collided with a big rock on the hill.”

Families

On board were two Germans and four Indians, while the remainder were Nepalis, including a computer engineer, his wife and their two daughters who had just returned from the United States.

The four Indians were a divorced couple and their daughter and son, aged 15 and 22, going on a family holiday, said Indian police official Uttam Sonawane.

“There is a court order for (the father) to spend time with the family for 10 days every year, so they were taking a trip.”

According to the Aviation Safety Network website, the aircraft was made by Canada’s de Havilland and made its first flight more than 40 years ago.

Past crashes

The European Union has banned all Nepali airlines from its airspace over safety concerns.

The Himalayan country also has some of the most remote and tricky runways in the world, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots.

The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.

In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane crash-landed near the notoriously difficult international airport in Kathmandu, killing 51 people and seriously injuring 20.

That accident was the deadliest in Nepal since 1992, when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed on approach to the airport killing all 167 people on board.

Just two months earlier, a Thai Airways aircraft crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people. – AFP, May 30, 2022.