In Nepal, a passenger plane with two Germans and 20 other people on board has disappeared from radar. Authorities have now found the missing plane – just a few minutes’ flight from the departure point of Pokhara, at the foot of Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest mountain on earth.
The Kathmandu airport director announced this on Sunday. However, he cannot yet say whether there are any survivors. He was also unable to provide any information about the condition of the machine. Nepalese authorities said infantry were on the move as rescue helicopters were unable to land.
The first members of the rescue team have already reached the site. Pictures show the destroyed plane at the crash site. The first 14 bodies have now been recovered.
Tara Air announced that contact with the Twin Otter machine was lost shortly after it took off from the western city of Pokhara on Sunday morning. The search for the machine, which was en route to the popular mountaineering destination of Jomsom, was hampered by bad weather.
According to Tara Air, the plane left for Jomsom in the morning with three crew members. Among the passengers were two Germans, a man and a woman from Hesse. The ARD reports, citing the German embassy in Kathmandu. There were also four Indians, 13 Nepalese and three crew members on board.
Jomsom is a popular mountaineering destination in the Himalayas. The place is only about 20 minutes away from Pokhara by plane.
“We are trying to locate the possible area where the plane could be,” a Tara Air spokesman told AFP. A spokesman for the Nepalese Interior Ministry said two helicopters were dispatched to search for the plane. In However, visibility in the area is very poor.”The bad weather will likely hamper the search operation.”
Aviation in Nepal has been booming for years, but safety standards are low due to inadequate staff training and poor maintenance of the machines. The European Union has therefore banned all Nepalese airlines from its airspace.
In addition, the Himalayan state is home to some of the most remote and difficult airstrips. In addition, the weather in Nepal’s mountains can change quickly and create dangerous flying conditions. In March 2018, a plane operated by Bangladeshi airline US-Bangla crashed near the international airport in the capital, Kathmandu. 51 people died in the process.
This month, the country’s second international airport opened in Bhairahawa. The construction, which costs the equivalent of 70 million euros, is intended to relieve the airport in Kathmandu and make it easier for Buddhist pilgrims from all over Asia to get to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, which is not far from the new airport.
According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, insurance brokers report that Allianz wants to get rid of hundreds of medium-sized companies by increasing prices by up to 400 percent. Property insurance, which companies use to protect themselves against fire, storm damage and business interruption, is affected.
