Nepal recovers bodies of all 22 victims of plane crash, voice recorder found
A member of the Nepal Army carries the body of a victim of the Tara Air passenger plane, that crashed with 22 people on board while on its way to Jomsom, from the helicopter at the airport in Kathmandu, Nepal on May 30, 2022. (Photo: REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar)
KATHMANDU: Nepali search and rescue teams on Tuesday recovered the body of the last of 22 people aboard a small plane that crashed into a Himalayan mountainside two days earlier and also found the flight's voice recorder.
Two Germans, four Indians and 16 Nepalis were on the De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter aircraft which crashed 15 minutes after taking off from the tourist town of Pokhara, 125km west of Kathmandu, on Sunday morning.
The plane was bound for Jomsom, a popular tourist and pilgrimage site, 80km northwest of Pokhara, on what should have been a 20-minute flight.
A spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said the plane had only the voice recorder to preserve ground to air and air to air conversations. Modern planes have two such "black boxes" - a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder.
"Nothing except the wreckage is left at the crash site now," Deo Chandra Lal Karna told Reuters. "All the bodies and the black box have been recovered."
Operated by privately owned Tara Air, the aircraft made its first flight in April 1979, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
Nepali soldiers and rescue workers had retrieved 21 bodies from the wreckage, strewn across a steep slope at an altitude of around 14,500 feet on Monday. They recovered the last body on Tuesday morning, Karna said.
Bodies of 10 victims were brought to Kathmandu on Monday, and the remaining 12 bodies would be flown into the capital on Tuesday, the CAAN official said.
"The bodies will be sent to the (Tribhuvan University) Teaching Hospital for post mortem ... and will be handed over to the families after identification," Karna said. The names of the victims were released on Sunday.
The Nepali government has set up a five-member panel to determine the cause of the crash and suggest preventative measures for the aviation sector.
Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest, has a history of air accidents.
In early 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka to Kathmandu crashed on landing and caught fire, killing 51 of the 71 people on board.
In 1992, all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it ploughed into a hill as it tried to land in Kathmandu.
