Rescuers searching for a mountain in Nepal have recovered the bodies of 22 people aboard a plane that crashed on Sunday, authorities said. All but one were recovered on Monday and the remaining victim was found on Tuesday.
Recovery efforts were delayed because some bodies were trapped under the wreckage of the plane. Lifeguards working with their bare hands had difficulty moving the metal scraps.
Aerial photographs of the crash site showed parts of the plane strewn with rocks and moss next to a mountain gorge.
The Tara Air Twin Otter turboprop lost contact with the airport tower on Sunday while flying on a scheduled 20-minute flight over an area of deep river gorges and mountain tops.
The crash site of a Tara Air plane is seen in Thasang, Nepal, on May 30, 2022. Captain Fishtail Air Pvt Ltd Nikalas Fjellgren / Handout via Reuters
Relatives waited most of the day at the airport to receive news of their loved ones.
Four Indians and two Germans were on the plane, Tara Air said. All three crew members and other passengers were of Nepalese nationality, he said.
The German news agency dpa reported that the two Germans were a man and a woman from the western state of Hesse.
“Unfortunately, we have to assume at this point that the two people are no longer alive,” DPA was quoted as saying by a spokesman for Hesse’s home ministry. “Relatives have already been informed by Hesse police and care measures have been initiated.”
Local news said the passengers included two Nepalese families, one with four members and the other with seven.
The army said the plane crashed in Sanosware, Mustang District, near the mountain town of Jomsom, where it was heading after taking off from the resort town of Pokhara, 125 miles west of Kathmandu.
According to tracking data from flightradar24.com, the 43-year-old plane took off from Pokhara at 9:55 a.m. and transmitted its last signal at 10:07 a.m. at an altitude of 12,825 feet.
The destination of the plane is popular among foreign hikers traveling its mountain trails and among Indian and Nepalese pilgrims visiting the revered Muktinath temple.
The remains were found by villagers who had been searching the area for the Yarsagumba fungus, commonly known as the Himalayan Viagra, according to local news reports.
The Setopati news website quoted a neighbor, Bishal Magar, as saying they knew about the missing plane on Sunday, but were only able to get to the site on Monday morning after following the smell of fuel.
Magar said it looked like the plane could have cut off the top of a smaller mountain and then crashed into a larger mountain.
The Twin Otter, a rugged aircraft originally built by Canadian aircraft maker De Havilland, has been in service in Nepal for about 50 years, during which it has been involved in about 21 accidents, according to aviationnepal.com.
The aircraft, with the wing mounted at the top and the fixed landing gear, is appreciated for its durability and its ability to take off and land on short runways.
Production of the aircraft originally ended in the 1980s. Another Canadian company, Viking Air, re-produced the model in 2010.