US-Bangla Airlines plane crashes while landing at Nepal’s Kathmandu airport

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The Bangladesh plane “became unstable” while descending to land at the Tribhuvan International Airport at Kathmandu and crashed, an airport official said.

A plane crashes at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Monday. (ANI Twitter)

 

A passenger plane of private carrier US-Bangla Airlines crash-landed near Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu and caught fire on Monday.

Casualties are feared, and efforts are on to douse the burning plane, which reportedly had 67 people on board, reports said.

Emergency respondents and ambulances rushed to the football field where the plane crashed, Himalayan Times quoted airport sources are saying.

According to airport officials, 17 passengers have been rescued.

Those who were pulled out have been rushed to the hospital while the fire-fighters are trying to rescue remaining passengers.

The aircraft S2-AGU, which took off from Dhaka for Kathmandu, careened off the runway during landing at 2:20 pm and crashed onto the football ground near TIA, Kathmandu Post newspaper quoted TIA spokesperson Prem Nath Thakur as saying.

The plane is reported to be a 78-seater twin turbo prop aircraft.

“We are trying to bring the fire under control. Details are awaited,” airport spokesman Birendra Prasad Shrestha said.

The plane “became unstable” while descending and crashed, another airport official said. (With inputs from Reuters)

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Flight #BS211 of US Bangla Airlines, carrying up to 78 people, catches fire after crash landing at #Kathmandu Airport; reports of rescue of more than a dozen survivors. Rescue ongoing. Photos: Twitter users.

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Highlights

1. The plane caught fire after it careened off the runway during landing and crashed onto a football ground near the airport, the TIA spokesperson Prem Nath Thakur was quoted as saying by the Kathmandu Post.

2. The plane was a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400

3. 17 people were rescued. 50 bodies recovered so far from the plane crash in Nepal; more deaths feared.

4. Victims' bodies have been recovered from the wreckage, an official said. "We just pulled out dead bodies and injured from the debris," government spokesman Narayan Prasad Duwadi told AFP.

5. Nepal's Tribhuvan International Airport has been closed for all arrival and departures

6. The aircraft took off from Dhaka and landed at the airport at 2:20 pm (local time).

7. US-Bangla Airlines is a unit of the US-Bangla Group, a U.S. Bangladeshi joint venture company. The Bangladeshi carrier launched operations in July 2014 and operates Bombardier Inc and Boeing aircraft.

8. In early 2016, a Twin Otter turboprop aircraft slammed into a mountainside in Nepal killing all 23 people on board. Two days later, two pilots were killed when a small passenger plane crash-landed in the country's hilly midwest.

9. Rescue operation underway.

10. Live footage posted on Facebook showed the towering columns of smoke rising behind the runway, where another plane stood waiting on the tarmac.

Mountainous Nepal is notorious for air accidents. Small aircraft often run into trouble at provincial airstrips. A Thai Airways flight from Bangkok crashed while trying to land in Kathmandu in 1992 killing all on board.

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