Plane carrying 19 passengers slips on runway, crashes at Nepal Airport; casualties reported

Kathmandu; A plane with 19 people on board slipped off the runway and crashed on Wednesday while trying to take off from Kathmandu airport. The plane belongs to the domestic Saurya airline and was en route to the resort town of Pokhara from the Nepali capital.

The plane was carrying a few technical staff, Gyanendra Bhul, information officer at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) told the Himalayan Times. Smoke was seen coming from the plane, and firefighters and security personnel are currently trying to control the situation.

According to the Kathmandu Post, five bodies have been recovered from the crash site, while the pilot has been rushed to the hospital. Police and firefighters are carrying out rescue operations at the accident site.

Nepal has a long history of plane crashes, with the rugged mountainous terrain, lack of investment in better planes and infrastructure, unpredictable weather and poor regulation to blame for these accidents. In January 2023, all 72 passengers were killed after the ATR-72 Yeti Airlines flight crashed into a gorge near the newly-built airport in Pokhara. This was the country’s worst air disaster in 30 years.

Prior to that, a Tara flight with 22 people on board, including four Indians from Thane, crashed in  Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district on May 29, 2022, killing all people on board. As many as 51 people were killed in 2018 in a tragic incident near the Kathmandu Airport after a crash.

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