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Two Americans and two immigrants living in the United States were among the 72 killed when their plane crashed in Nepal over the weekend, the Himalayan nation’s worst air disaster in 30 years.
Yeti Airlines Flight 691 took off from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu on Sunday morning. It should have been a 25-minute drive to Pokhara, a town about 125 miles west that is popular with tourists. But authorities were alerted that the plane had crashed into a gorge 30 minutes after takeoff and about a mile from the two-week-old airport in Pokhara.
No one survived, authorities said Monday, and authorities on the ground are still examining the wreckage to determine why the plane went down.
“Our thoughts are with the families of those on board,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a briefing Wednesday. “The United States stands ready to support Nepal in any way we can at this difficult hour.”
The Washington Post previously reported that a statement from the airline said at least 53 Nepalese nationals and 15 foreign nationals were on the flight – with people from India, Russia, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, France and Ireland.
Price did not name the two Americans who died and two immigrants living in the United States.
The Post reported the identities of some of those killed in the plane crash: an Australian teacher, an Argentinian hotelier, a British ballet dancer who had celebrated her 34th birthday the day before, a Nepali folk singer traveling for a local festival and a US-trained co-pilot whose husband also died in a plane crash.
Nepal plane crash victims: Dancer, folk singer and outdoorsman
Yeti Airlines Spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told The Post on Tuesday that Captain Anju Hatiwada went to Toulouse, France, in 2021 for training on the ATR 72 — the twin-engine turboprop aircraft involved in Sunday’s flight — and had nearly 6,400 hours flight experience.
Officials recovered both black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, a spokesman at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu said. The data recorder will be sent to France for analysis, the Associated Press reported.
Nepal has experienced numerous aviation accidents over the years. Part of the problem is that the landlocked country is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains.
“Variety of weather patterns along with hostile topography are the main challenges surrounding aircraft operations in Nepal,” according to a 2019 safety report by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.
The manufacturer of the crashed plane, ATR Aircraft, is based in France. According to the company’s website, the first ATR 72 flew in October 1988.
Reuters reported that nearly 350 people have died in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal since 2000. Bloomberg News reported that the European Union has banned all Nepal-based airlines from entering its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.
A twin-prop plane operated by Tara Air, a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines, killed 22 people when it crashed in the Himalayan mountains in May.
Authorities said on January 16 that there were “no survivors” of the plane crash in Nepal. At least 69 of the 72 people on board have been located. (Video: AP)
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