By Monday night, officials were able to recover the bodies of 21 passengers, but the operation was stopped due to poor weather conditions. On Tuesday morning, the operation was resumed to retrieve the last body.
The Canadian-built turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane of the Tara Air – travelling Pokhara to Jomsom – crashed on Sunday. It was carrying 22 people, including four Indians, three Japanese, two Germans, and three Nepali crew members.
According to a preliminary report of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), bad weather was the main reason that led to the crash of the Tara Air plane. However, a five-member committee, headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, has been formed by the government to find out the exact cause of the crash.
“The adverse weather on Sunday could be the reason behind the accident,” former Director General of CAAN Raj Kumar Chhetri was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. “Our topography is mostly high hills and mountains, along with continuous changing wind and weather patterns causing difficulties for planes to maneuver around high terrains and in low visibility.”
Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, has a record of air accidents. In 2016, all 23 people aboard were killed when a plane of the same airline flying the same route crashed after takeoff.In March 2018, a US-Bangla Air crash occurred at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 51 people on board. A Sita Air flight crashed in September 2012 while making an emergency landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.
