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Nepal has halted the search and rescue of a plane carrying 22 people that went missing on Sunday. An army spokesman cited “loss of daylight and adverse weather” for the suspension.
Air and ground efforts will resume in the morning, the army spokesman said on Twitter at 7 p.m.
The plane, a DHC-6-300 Twin Otter operated by the private airline Tara Air, disappeared shortly afterwards. take off from Pokhara in central Nepal on Sunday at 9:55 a.m., according to the Indian embassy in Kathmandu.
The plane was heading to Jomsom, near Nepal’s border with Tibet. Flight time was to be 20 minutes.
Tara Air told Reuters the plane was carrying four Indian nationals, two Germans and 16 Nepalese, three of whom were crew members.
Nepalese army spokesman said around 2pm that military personnel and helicopters were “trying to locate [the] plane “, which was thought to be” in and around Lete “, about 22 miles south of Jomsom.
But the Nepal Civil Aviation Authority said in a press release on Sunday that at least one search helicopter had returned to Jomsom “due to bad weather without locating the plane,” according to Reuters.
“Helicopters are ready to search Kathmandu, Pokhara and Jomsom once the weather conditions improve,” aviation authorities said in a statement. “Army and police search teams have marched to the scene.”
Tara Air flight 9NAET which took off from Pokhara at 9.55am today with 22 people on board, including 4 Indians, has disappeared. The search and rescue operation is activated. The embassy is in contact with his family.
Our emergency number: + 977-9851107021. https://t.co/2aVhUrB82b
– IndiaInNepal (@IndiaInNepal) May 29, 2022
According to Flightradar24, a website that tracks real-time flights around the world, Tara Air’s flight stopped transmitting a signal around Shikha, a mountainous area north of Pokhara. The plane lost contact with the control tower shortly after taking off on its short journey from Pokhara, the Associated Press reported.
Twenty-three people died in 2016 when a Tara Air-operated Twin Otter plane flying the same route from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed and then found near a village about 30 miles south of Jomsom.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, audited Nepal’s civil aviation industry in 2017 and found that the country had a score below the world average in accident investigation. . Nepalese airlines have been banned from flying into EU airspace due to “lack of security oversight by aviation authorities”.
At least 49 dead in Nepal after a plane crashed on landing, according to authorities