A passenger plane with 22 people on board is missing, according to the police in Nepal. Air traffic control lost contact with the machine around 10 a.m. Sunday morning, police spokesman Bishnu Kumar KC said. The plane of the Nepalese airline Tara Air was with 19 passengers and three crew members on the way from Pokhara – a popular tourist destination around 200 kilometers west of the capital Kathmandu – to Jomsom. “There are four Indians, two Germans and 16 Nepalese nationals on the plane,” added the police spokesman.
According to military information, the search for the machine was interrupted for the night. The reason was bad weather and darkness, said the spokesman for the Nepalese military, Narayan Silwal, on Sunday via Twitter. “The search will resume on Monday morning, both from the air and from the ground,” he announced.
Even before nightfall, visibility was poor due to the weather and made the search difficult, a police spokesman said. In addition to helicopters, rescuers also tried to locate the machine around Mount Dhaulagiri – the seventh highest mountain in the world – on foot, it said. In parts of Nepal it has been raining heavily for days.
Pokhara is the starting point for numerous trekking tours, including the Annapurna Circuit. The Annapurna massif is a popular trekking region in the Himalayan country. The Pokhara-Jomsom flight route is considered one of the most accident-prone routes in Nepal. According to the Nepali Times, 74 people have died in five plane crashes on this route since 1997.
Source: Nachrichten
