French Expert Team Starts Investigation into Yeti Airlines Plane Crash in Pokhara

GG News Bureau

Kathmandu, 18th Jan. A team of French experts, who are in Nepal to assist the government in investigating the crash of a Yeti Airlines plane with 72 people on board, began their investigation on Wednesday and visited the accident site in the resort city of Pokhara, officials said.

According to a Yeti Airlines official, the nine-member team is speaking with airline employees and local authorities in Pokhara to learn more about the ATR-72 plane crash, which killed 71 people, including five Indians.

On Sunday, the plane that took off from Kathmandu at 10:30 a.m. crashed into the Seti River Gorge, killing all four crew members and 68 passengers. One person on the plane is still missing

The Nepalese government has formed a five-member investigation committee to look into the crash. The investigation panel, led by former aviation secretary Nagendra Ghimire, has been given 45 days to investigate the accident and report back.

The ATR-72 is a twin-engine turboprop regional airliner developed in France and Italy by ATR, a joint venture between the French aerospace company Aerospatiale and the Italian aviation conglomerate Aeritalia.

Meanwhile, the Nepali Army team continued search operations in the Seti gorge for the aircraft’s remains, according to an Army personnel.

As one more body was brought to Kathmandu from the crash site on Wednesday, the medical team performed post-mortems on 49 other corpses.

The bodies of twenty-two Nepali nationals have already been returned to their families by the Pokhara Academy of Health Sciences, where doctors completed the post-mortem on Tuesday.

Many bodies are burnt or split in parts, thus making it challenging to identify.

The bodies went through DNA tests after postmortem before they were handed over to their family members, Yeti Airlines spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula said.

As a result of the DNA identification formality, the dead bodies have not been handed over to family members, who have been complaining about the lengthy procedure

Since the first disaster in August 1955, 914 people have died in Nepalese air crashes, according to the country’s civil aviation body.

The Yeti Airlines crash in Pokhara on Sunday was the 104th in Nepali aviation history, and the third in terms of fatalities.