Nepal: a missing plane with twenty-two people on board

Near Pokhara, Nepal, January 1, 2022. NIRANJAN SHRESTHA / AP A twin-engine aircraft carrying twenty-two people – three crew members and nineteen passengers – was reported missing over a mountainous area in Nepal, announced, Sunday, May 29, the airline Tara Air. “Contact was lost with a domestic flight which was to link Jomsom from Pokhara,” Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesperson for the Kathmandu-based company, told Agence France-Presse. The city of Jomsom, known as a starting point for hikers in the Himalayas, is a twenty-minute flight from Pokhara, the country’s second largest city, 200 kilometers west of the capital Kathmandu. The duration of this flight is usually about fifteen minutes, specifies the American press agency Associated Press (AP), but the control tower lost contact with the device shortly after takeoff. According to AP, this line is popular with foreign hikers, but also Indian and Nepalese pilgrims who go to Jomsom to go to the temples of Muktinath. Phanindra Mani Pokharel, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said two helicopters had been dispatched for the search operations. “Bad weather could slow down search operations. Visibility is so low that you can’t see anything,” he said. If it has rained in the region in recent days, flights have continued to operate normally, AP continues, adding that the planes that transport travelers between the two cities fly between mountains before landing in a valley. A poor record of aviation safety Nepalese air transport has boomed in recent years, carrying tourists, walkers and climbers, as well as goods, to remote and hard-to-reach places by road. But the country has a poor aviation safety record, due to insufficient pilot training and maintenance. The country also has some of the most remote and dangerous tracks in the world, located in the middle of snow-capped peaks. In March 2018, a plane belonging to the Bangladeshi company US-Bangla Airlines crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 51 people. The following year, three people died when a plane failed to take off and hit two helicopters. The deadliest accident dates back to 1992, when 167 people were killed on board a Pakistan International Airlines flight near Kathmandu airport. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Another aircraft crash in Nepal since July The crash of an Airbus near Kathmandu claimed 167 lives Le Monde with AP and AFP