No survivors have been found from the Tara Airlines plane that crashed in Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district on Sunday with 22 people on board.
The Tara Air Twin-Otter flight 9N-AET crashed due to bad weather, a preliminary investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) shows. The aircraft belonging to Tara Air went missing on Sunday morning in a mountainous region and had four Indian nationals, two Germans, and 13 Nepali passengers, besides a three-member Nepali crew. The Canadian-built plane was flying from the city of Pokhara to Jomsom.
The plane took off at 9:55 am from Pokhara and lost contact with air control about 12 minutes later at 10:07 am, according to the Civil Aviation Authority. The aircraft was scheduled to land at Jomsom Airport in the Western mountainous region at 10:15 am.
The search and rescue team reached the crash site on Monday morning. Captain Prabhakar Ghimire flew the aircraft. There were two other crew members and 19 passengers on board. 2 Germans, 4 Indians, and 13 Nepali passengers were on board.
Here’s the list of passengers and crew members on board:
Indian passengers: Ashok Kumar Tripathi, Dhanush Tripathi, Ritika Tripathi, and Vaibhawi Tripathi
Other passengers: Indra Bahadur Gole, Purushottam Gole, Rajan Kumar Gole, Mick Grat, Basant Lama, Ganesh Narayan Shrestha, Raveena Shrestha, Rasmi Shrestha, Rozina Shrestha, Prakash Sunuwar, Makar Bahadur Tamang, Rammaya Tamang, Sukumaya Tamang, Tulsadevi Tamang and Yuvi Wilner.
Crew members: Captain Prabhakar Ghimire, co-pilot Utsav Pokharel and air hostess Kismi Thapa.
Tara Air is the newest and biggest airline service provider in the Nepalese mountains, according to the airline website. It started its business in 2009 with the mission of helping develop rural Nepal.
