A file photo of the Agni Air Dorner that crashed on Tuesday morning near Kathmandu
A Dornier 228 aircraft of Agni Air, carrying 11 passengers and three crew members, crashed Tuesday morning in bad weather while returning to Kathmandu after being unable to land in Lukla.
The plane had taken off at 7am and diverted back to Kathmandu after encountering technical problems, but lost contact with Kathmandu radar control at 7:21am. Villagers in Makwanpur’s Sikharpur village heard a loud bang in the mountains above, and reports said police have started walking up to the site in heavy rain.
Airline sources who did not want to be identified said the pilot had reported generator failure en route to Lukla and decided to return, but the backup generator also later failed. Generator failure would mean the plane would have lost its cockpit avionics and would be effectively flying blind in rugged terrain and bad weather.
Rescue workers search for remains of the crash as the villagers look on.
Witnesses quoted on FM radio said all on board were dead. The crash site is located about 15 miles south of Kathmandu and at an altitude of 9,000 ft. Kathmandu airport was closed when the plane went missing and incoming international flights were diverted. The airport reopened at 8:45am, and domestic flights to Biratnagar and Bhairawa were operating.
Preliminary reports indicate the accident was caused by a combination of technical failure and extremely bad weather. It has been raining continuously in central Nepal since Monday evening.
This is the second major crash of a Lukla-bound flight in the past five years. In November 2008, a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter crashed on the threshold of the runway at Lukla, killing 14 passengers, mostly German tourists. The pilot survived.
Six of the 11 passengers killed in Tuesday’s crash were foreign trekkers. The plane was piloted by Capt Lucky Shah and the co-pilot was Sofiya Singh.
The rescue and search operation at the crash site.
The rescue and search operation at the crash site.
A Fishtail air helicopter reaches the crash site.
The rescue and search operation at the crash site.
A Fishtail helicopter arrives at the airport in Kathmandu carrying the remains of the Agni Air crash
The remains of the Dornier 228 aircraft and the victims of the crash being unloaded and transported to a van.
A notice at the Agni Air counter in the Kathmandu Domestic Airport announces that all the flights of the day have been cancelled.
