“Black Box” of Ill-Fated Nepal’s Yeti Airlines Plane Recovered

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Jan 16: Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the ill-fated Yeti Airlines plane that crashed near Pokhara in Nepal were recovered on Monday as search and rescue teams rappelled down a 300-meter gorge to resume their efforts to recover the bodies of the victims and four persons on the flight still reported “missing.” The rescue operations had to be suspended on Sunday evening due to poor weather conditions.

The black box — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder —found at the accident site has already been handed over to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), a spokesperson at Yeti Airlines said. All the preparations for conducting a post-mortem on the dead bodies have been completed and the process would start soon, he said. A medical team has been airlifted from Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu. As soon as they reach Pokhara, the post-mortem will start at Western Regional Hospital in Pokhara, he added.

Rescuers had recovered 68 bodies by Sunday while four were reported “missing” of the 68 passengers and four crew members the ill-fated ATR 72 aircraft operated by Yeti Airlines that crashed in the tourist city of Pokhara seconds before landing on Sunday in clear weather.

The plane, on a scheduled flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara, gateway to scenic Annapurna mountain range, was carrying 57 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, and one person each from Argentina, Ireland, Australia and France. Pokhara police official Ajay K.C. said the search-and-rescue operation, which stopped because of darkness on Sunday, had resumed with rescuers looking into the debris of the plane lay scattered down a 300-meter (984 feet) gorge.  “We will take out the five bodies from the gorge and search for the remaining four that are still missing,” he said. The other 63 bodies had been sent to a hospital, he said.

Nepal has declared a day of national mourning on Monday and set up a panel to investigate the disaster and suggest measures to avoid such incidents in future. Nearly 350 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal — home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest — where sudden change of weather can make flying tricky.

It remains unclear what caused the crash, the country’s deadliest airplane accident in three decades, which took place amid mild, non-windy weather.

The twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft, operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, was completing the 27-minute flight from the capital, Kathmandu, to Pokhara, 200 kilometres (125 miles) west.

A witness who recorded footage of the plane’s descent from his balcony said he saw the plane flying low before it suddenly veered to its left. “I saw that and I was shocked… I thought that today everything will be finished here after it crashes, I will also be dead,” said Diwas Bohora. After it crashed, red flames erupted and the ground shook violently, like an earthquake, Bohora said. “I was scared. Seeing that scene, I was scared.”

Amit Singh, an experienced pilot and founder of India’s Flight Safety Foundation, said the video appears to show a stall, a situation in which a plane loses lift, especially likely at low airspeeds.

 A pilot who routinely flies an ATR 72-500 plane from India to Nepal, said the region’s topography, with its mountain peaks and narrow valleys, raises the risk of accidents and sometimes requires pilots to fly by sight rather than relying on instruments. The pilot called ATR 72-500 an “unforgiving aircraft” if the pilot isn’t highly skilled and familiar with the region’s terrain and wind speeds.

Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said the aircraft last made contact with the airport from near Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. before crashing.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the Pokhara Academy of Health and Science, Western Hospital, where the bodies are being kept. Relatives and friends of victims, many of whom were from Pokhara, consoled each other as they waited.

Bimala Bhenderi was waiting outside the post-mortem room Monday. She was planning to meet her friend, Tribhuvan Paudel, on Tuesday when she heard that his flight had crashed. “I’m so sad, I can’t believe it still,” she said in tears.

Bikash Jaiswal said he could identify his wife’s brother only by the ring he wore, and that he had yet to tell his wife, who was giving birth Sunday. Sanjay Jaiswal, who worked as a marketing agent for a private pharmaceutical company in Kathmandu, was flying to Pokhara for the birth. More than 24 hours after the crash, Sanjay’s body lay in the same hospital where his niece was just born.

The Civil Aviation Authority said that 38 people have been identified. Gyan Khadka, a police spokesperson in the district, said the bodies will be handed over to family after officials finish post mortem reports. The bodies of foreigners and those that are unrecognizable will be sent to Kathmandu for further investigation.

Local resident Bishnu Tiwari, who rushed to the crash site near the Seti River to help search for bodies, said rescue efforts Sunday were hampered by thick smoke and a raging fire.

“The flames were so hot that we couldn’t go near the wreckage. I heard a man crying for help, but because of the flames and smoke we couldn’t help him,” Tiwari said.

At Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, family members appeared distraught as they waited for information.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it’s still trying to confirm the fate of two South Korean passengers and has sent staff to the scene. The Russian Ambassador to Nepal, Alexei Novikov, confirmed the death of four Russian citizens who were on board the plane.

Omar Gutiérrez, governor of Argentina’s Neuquen province, wrote on his official Twitter account that an Argentine passenger on the flight was Jannet Palavecino, from his province.

The type of plane involved, the ATR 72, has been used by airlines around the world for short regional flights. Introduced in the late 1980s by a French and Italian partnership, the aircraft model has been involved in several deadly accidents over the years. In Taiwan, two accidents involving ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600 aircrafts in 2014 and 2015 led to the planes being grounded for a period.

ATR identified the plane involved in Sunday’s crash as an ATR 72-500 in a tweet. According to plane tracking data from flightradar24.com, the aircraft was 15 years old and “equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.” It was previously flown by India’s Kingfisher Airlines and Thailand’s Nok Air before Yeti took it over in 2019, according to records on Airfleets.net. Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR 72-500 planes, company spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula said.

Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest, has a history of air crashes. Sunday’s crash is Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it ploughed into a hill as it tried to land in Kathmandu. According to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety database, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946.

According to a 2019 safety report from Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, the country’s “hostile topography” and “diverse weather patterns” were the biggest dangers to flights in the country. The report said such accidents happened at airports that had short strips of runway for take-off and landing and most were due to pilot error. The report added that 37% of all air crashes in Nepal between 2009 and 2018 were due to pilot error, not counting helicopters and recreational flights.

The family of a Christian priest in Kerala is mourning the death of three of their friends who died in the plane crash in Nepal while returning home after attending the missionary’s funeral at Anikadu near Pathanamthitta on Friday.

The victims Raju, Robin and Anil were among the group of five people who came to attend the funeral of Mathew Philip who was an evangelical Christian missionary in Nepal for almost 45 years. Philip, 76, died on January 11 after battling cancer for two years.

“The funeral was on January 13. Their flight was from Kochi to Mumbai and from there to Kathmandu. Deepak and Saran, could not board the ill-fated flight from Kathmandu but the other three took the flight. The news was a shock to us,” Philip’s brother Thomas said. Philip had returned from Nepal two years ago and was undergoing treatment for cancer.

The 44-year old Anju Khatiwada, who was the co-pilot in the ill-fated plane, met the same fate her husband as did her pilot husband 16 years ago. She had joined the Yeti Airlines in 2010, four years after her husband was killed in an air crash when a small passenger plane he was flying for the domestic carrier went down minutes before landing.

“Her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, died in 2006 in a crash of a Twin Otter plane of Yeti Airlines in Jumla,” airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said referring to Khatiwada. “She got her pilot training with the money she got from the insurance after her husband’s death.”

A pilot with more than 6,400 hours of flying time, Khatiwada had previously flown the popular tourist route from the capital, Kathmandu, to the country’s second-largest city, Pokhara, Bartaula said.

The body of Kamal K.C., the captain of the flight, who had more than 21,900 hours of flight time, has been recovered and identified. Kathiwada’s remains have not been identified but she is feared dead, Bartaula said.

“On Sunday, she was flying the plane with an instructor pilot, which is the standard procedure of the airline,” said a Yeti Airlines official, who knew Khatiwada personally. “She was always ready to take up any duty and had flown to Pokhara earlier,” said the official.