Dozens perish in Nepal plane crash

A plane with 72 people crashed in Nepal yesterday - the latest aviation disaster to hit the Himalayan nation.

There were 68 passengers including 15 foreigners - from India, Russia, Korea, Australia, Argentina, Ireland and France - and four crew, a Yeti Airlines spokesman said. There were no known survivors.

Sixty-eight bodies were pulled from the wreckage yesterday and the search operation will continue today for the remaining four people onboard.

The ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop from Kathmandu crashed between Pokhara's domestic airport and an international one that opened on January 1.

A video clip showed a plane at a low altitude banking sharply. Then came an explosion.

It went down near a ravine, later found to be strewn with bodies and aircraft parts.

Nepal's air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying people to remote areas including trekkers and climbers.

But it has been plagued by poor safety, and the European Union banned all Nepali carriers from its airspace.

Nepal also has some of the world's trickiest runways, and weather changes quickly in the mountains.

Last May all 22 people on a plane operated by Nepal's Tara Air died when it crashed, also at Pokhara.

Air traffic control lost contact with the twin-propeller Twin Otter soon after it took off for a flight to Jomsom. Its wreckage was found a day later, strewn across a mountainside at 4,400 meters.

After that crash authorities tightened regulations, including that planes would only be cleared to fly if there was favorable weather forecast throughout the route.

In March 2018 a US-Bangla Airlines plane crash-landed near Kathmandu's international airport, killing 51 people.

That accident was Nepal's deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people on a Pakistan International Airlines plane died when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu.

Two months earlier a Thai Airways aircraft crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.