Published: Less than 30 min ago
Updated: Less than 20 min ago
The plane came in dangerously low before appearing to roll to the left and crash into a ravine.
An Indian group of friends reportedly filmed themselves during the crash in Nepal which is believed to have killed all 72 on board.
In the middle of the broadcast, chaos broke out.
The plane, an ATR 72-500 turboprop aircraft, was just seconds from landing in Pokhara, Nepal when something went horribly wrong.
A witness on the ground captured the plane’s final seconds. The film shows how the plane comes in extremely low before landing, appears to roll over and crash in a big explosion.
Crashed into a ravine
The wreckage disintegrated in a sea of fire and black smoke rose into the sky from the crash site.
As parts of the plane crashed into a 300 meter deep ravine, the rescue work has been very difficult.
During Sunday evening, the rescue force had taken up about thirty of the 72 on board, 68 passengers and four in the crew, from the wreck site.
None of the 66 people the military found in and around the wreckage were alive.
The flight from Yeti Airlines took off from Kathmandu airport at 10.30 local time on Sunday morning.
Indian group of friends
The short journey to Pokhara would only take 25 minutes.
15 foreign nationals were on board the turboprop aircraft. Among them a Frenchman, an Irishman, an Argentinian, two South Koreans, four Russians and an Australian.
There were also five Indians on the plane.
Four of them belonged to a group of friends from the state of Uttar Pradesh who arrived in Kathmandu two days earlier.
On Sunday, the friends would go on to Pokhara for a few days of paragliding, relatives said to The Times of India.
Filmed the crash
They broadcast the last minutes of the flight live on Facebook to friends and family back home in India.
The video shows Sonu Jaiswal, 29, an entrepreneur from Baresar town.
His cousin Rajat Jaiswal confirms to Times of India that Sonu was on board the crashed plane.
– Sonu was live on Facebook during the flight to Pokhara. The live broadcast showed that Sonu and his friends were in a good mood, but suddenly flames erupted before the broadcast was interrupted, the cousin told the newspaper.
“This is really fun,” says one of the friends during the broadcast as the city of Pokhara comes closer and closer in the airplane window. Soon after, chaos broke out.
Suddenly, the screen is filled with a burning inferno and the phone continues filming while commotion and commotion are heard in the background.
Then the transmission is interrupted.
The government in crisis meeting
Local authorities in Baresar states to the Times of India that they had been in contact with relatives of the group of friends and promised them to help bring the bodies back to the hometown for burial.
The cause of the crash was a mystery on Sunday evening. The weather was clear and the plane was at normal altitude before landing.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal called a crisis meeting of the government after the crash and has also appointed a five-person accident commission.
The authorities must now inspect all aircraft belonging to the country’s airlines. Nepal’s aviation industry has a bad reputation and the country’s airlines are banned from flying over EU-wide airspace.
The accident plane 15 years old
As recently as last May, 22 people died when a plane from the company Tara Air crashed in Nepal.
But Sunday’s crash was the worst air accident in Nepal since 1992.
The accident plane was 15 years old. Manufacturer ATR, a Franco-Italian company, said in a statement that it was cooperating with the investigation into the crash.
Facts
Deadly plane crashes in Nepal
arrow I May 2022 22 people died – 16 Nepalese, four Indians and two Germans – when a Canadian propeller plane en route from Pokhara to the mountain village of Jomsom crashed.
arrow I February 2019 seven people died in a helicopter crash in eastern Nepal and in March 2018, 51 of 71 passengers on an aircraft belonging to a .
arrow I March 2018 51 people died when a flight from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka crashed at Kathmandu International Airport. 20 people survived.
arrow I February 2014 18 people died when a plane en route from Pokhara to the city of Jumla crashed into a mountain.
arrow I May 2012 15 people died when a plane from Pokhara crashed into a cliff near the mountain village of Jomsom. Six people survived the accident, two of whom were Danish.
arrow I September 1992 all 167 people on board died when a plane from Pakistan failed to land at Kathmandu airport.
arrow I August 1992 all 113 people on board died when a plane from Thailand crashed into a mountainside north of Kathmandu.
(Source: AP, AFP, TT)
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