Nepal plane crash: 69 bodies recovered so far

Rescuers struggled to recover the remaining three bodies from Pokhara plane crash’s site on Monday due to the difficult terrain, reports The Kathmandu Post. 

Tek Bahadur KC, chief district officer of Kaski, said that the rescue would continue on Tuesday.

The team recovered a body on Monday, he said.

With this, a total of 69 bodies have been recovered from a Yeti Airlines crash site in Pokhara in western Nepal.

“It’s very difficult to recover bodies from the 300-metre deep gorge which is very narrow as well. We have been using all equipment to make the mission successful,” said KC.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, an MI-17 helicopter of the Nepal Army has been mobilised to Pokhara to airlift the bodies to Kathmandu.

“The chopper will airlift the bodies on Tuesday morning,” said KC.

The civil aviation body also informed that the identities of 41 of the 69 victims have been ascertained as of Monday evening. It further informed that a team of forensic experts have been brought to Pokhara from Kathmandu to identify the victims.

According to the airport authority, the search and rescue team recovered the black box of the ATR 72 aircraft.

The black box, also referred to as Flight Data Recorder, is a device that documents all of the activities of an aircraft. The black box provides vital data that helps investigators figure out what happened during the flight.

The Yeti Airlines flight NYT 691 from Kathmandu to Pokhara crashed just before landing at the new international airport on Sunday morning in the worst domestic aviation disaster to date.

Among the passengers were three infants, three children and 62 adults.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the passengers included 53 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, one Irish, one Australian, one Argentinian, two Koreans and one French.

Meanwhile, the Authority has said its flight safety inspectors have examined all the ATR-42 and ATR-72 aircraft after the crash on Sunday. “During the inspection, no technical faults have been found in the aircraft,” the Authority said in a press statement on Monday evening.

It has said that daily inspection, pre-flight inspection and scheduled inspection have been regularly conducted as per the standards set by the ICAO and those recommended by the aircraft manufacturers.