Nepal Plane Crash: Pilot Lone Survivor, 18 Killed As Flight Plummets During Take-off

The pilot was rescued from the burning wreckage and 18 others aboard a Saurya Airlines plane were killed when it crashed during takeoff at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Wednesday (July 23). The Pokhara-bound flight, carrying a total of 19 people including the crew, slipped off the runway and crashed around 11 am.

According to the police, the pilot is the sole survivor in the crash. “Eighteen bodies have been recovered, including one foreigner,” police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki told AFP. “We are in the process of taking them for post-mortem.”

Footage from the spot showed dramatic scenes of the plane speeding down the runway before a fire broke out with high flames and thick black smoke billowing from the wreckage.

A doctor said the pilot was undergoing treatment at the Kathmandu Medical College Hospital. The survivor has received injuries to the eyes but is out of danger. The fire that broke out after the plane crash was doused, while rescue operations at the accident site are underway.

Karki said the flight was carrying two crew and 17 of the company’s staff members. The flight was being conducted for either technical or maintenance purposes, Gyanendra Bhul of Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority told AFP without giving further details.

Bahadur and Bhul were unable to confirm the nationality of the sole foreigner aboard. Images of the aftermath shared by Nepal’s military showed the plane’s fuselage split apart and burnt to a husk. Around a dozen soldiers in camouflage were standing on top of the wreckage with the surrounding earth coated in fire retardant.

The plane was scheduled to fly on Nepal’s busiest air route between Kathmandu and Pokhara, an important tourism hub. Saurya Airlines is a domestic carrier with a fleet of only three aircraft, all Bombardier CRJ 200. Each has a capacity of 50 passengers.

Plagued by poor safety

Nepal has a woeful track record on aviation safety and has seen a spate of deadly light plane and helicopter crashes over the decades due to insufficient training and maintenance – issues compounded by the treacherous geography. The European Union has banned all Nepali carriers from its airspace over safety concerns.

The country has some of the world’s trickiest runways to land on, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots. The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating difficult flying conditions.

The last major commercial flight accident in Nepal was in January 2023, when a Yeti Airlines service crashed while landing at Pokhara, killing all 72 aboard. That accident was Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane died when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu airport. Earlier that year, a Thai Airways aircraft had crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.

In 2019, a Bangladeshi airliner crashed at Tribhuvan airport, resulting in 51 deaths while 20 passengers survived. An investigation showed that the plane was misaligned with the runway, and the disoriented pilot attempted to land in “sheer desperation” before the crash took place.