Pilot survives Saurya Airlines plane crash in Nepal that killed 18 others on board

The plane plunged into a gorge while taking off from Kathmandu airport for a test flight to Pokhara

Eighteen people were killed when a plane crashed during take-off in Nepal's capital Kathmandu on Wednesday morning, officials said.

The Saurya Airlines flight was heading to Pokhara on a test flight with a crew of two and 17 members of the airline's technical staff on board, including a Yemeni.

The plane went off the runway of Tribhuvan International Airport at 11.11am, before catching fire and plunging into a gorge, Subhash Jha, director of the airport operations department, told The National.

Only the pilot, Capt Manish Shakya, 37, survived.

“Eighteen people, including the crew, have died in the crash but the captain has survived,” Tej Bahadur Poudyal, the airport's information officer, told The National.

“He is stable and is undergoing treatment at Kathmandu Medical College.”

A doctor told local media that the pilot had suffered eye injuries and was not in a serious condition.

Tribhuvan International Airport, Nepal's main airport for international and domestic flights, was closed after the crash.

Video posted on social media showed the plane rising above the runway and then banking to its right before crashing into the ground and exploding in a ball of fire.

Emergency workers including police and firefighters tried to put out the flames as thick black smoke billowed from the crash site.

The charred remains of the plane lay scattered across green fields as the bodies of the victims were carried on stretchers to ambulances.

Mr Jha said all the bodies were recovered and sent for postmortem examination.

“The deceased are all technical staff of the airlines. They were flying to Pokhara for regular maintenance work. The families have been informed and the airline will look after the compensation and other requirements,” he said.

“The reasons for the crash are not yet known, only an investigation can tell the cause but the weather was conducive this morning,” he said.

Poor aviation safety record

Nepal has a poor aviation record and has suffered a spate of flight disasters in recent years.

There have been 27 deadly plane crashes in the country over the past three decades killing more than 600 people, according to the Aviation Safety database.

In December, the EU extended a decade-long ban on Nepali airlines in its airspace, saying they did not meet international aviation safety standards.

In January last year, 72 people were killed when a Yeti Airlines flight crashed near the city of Pokhara.

The plane plunged into a 300-metre gorge shortly before it was due to land. It was the country's deadliest plane crash since 1992, when 167 people were killed on a Pakistan Airlines flight which crash-landed in Kathmandu.

In 2018, 51 people died during a crash-landing at Tribhuvan International Airport.

Nepal, a country of about 30 million people, sits in the Himalayas and is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains including Mount Everest, Kanchenjunga and Annapurna.

While it attracts vast numbers of tourists for trekking and mountaineering, its airports are small and of poor standards. There is also poor maintenance of equipment and lax enforcement of regulations.