At least 44 killed in Nepal's worst air crash in nearly five years

KATHMANDU, Jan 15 (Reuters) - At least 44 people were killed on Sunday when a domestic flight crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, an aviation authority official said, in the small Himalayan country's worst crash in nearly five years.

Hundreds of rescue workers were scouring the hillside where the Yeti Airlines flight, carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu, went down. The weather was clear, said Jagannath Niroula, spokesman for Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority.

"Thirty bodies have been recovered and sent to hospital," Niroula told Reuters. "Another 14 bodies are still lying at the crash site and authorities are bringing in a crane to move them."

Local TV showed rescue workers scrambling around broken sections of the aircraft. Some of the ground near the crash site was scorched, with licks of flames visible.

"The plane is burning," said police official Ajay K.C., adding that rescue workers were having difficulty reaching the site in a gorge between two hills near the tourist town's airport.

The craft made contact with the airport from Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m. (0505 GMT), the aviation authority said in a statement. "Then it crashed."

"Half of the plane is on the hillside," said Arun Tamu, a local resident, who told Reuters he reached the site minutes after the plane went down. "The other half has fallen into the gorge of the Seti river."

Khum Bahadur Chhetri said he watched from the roof of his house as the flight approached.

"I saw the plane trembling, moving left and right, and then suddenly its nose dived and it went into the gorge," Chhetri told Reuters, adding that local residents took two passengers to a hospital.

The government has set up a panel to investigate the cause of the crash and it is expected to report within 45 days, the finance minister, Bishnu Paudel, told reporters.

The crash is Nepal's deadliest since March 2018, when a US-Bangla Dash 8 turboprop flight from Dhaka crashed on landing in Kathmandu, killing 51 of the 71 people on board, according to Aviation Safety Network.

At least 309 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal - home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest - where sudden weather changes can make for hazardous conditions.

The European Union has banned Nepali airlines from its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.

Those on the twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft included two infants and four crew members, said airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula.

Passengers included five Indians, four Russians and one Irish, two South Korean, one Australian, one French and one Argentine national.

The ATR72 of European planemaker ATR is a widely used twin engine turboprop plane manufactured by a joint venture of Airbus and Italy's Leonardo. Yeti Airlines has a fleet of six ATR72-500 planes, according to its website.

"ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer," the company said on Twitter, adding that its first thoughts were for those affected, after having been informed of the accident.

Airbus and Leonardo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said on Twitter the Yeti Airlines aircraft was 15 years old and equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.

"We are downloading high-resolution data and verifying the data quality," it said.

On its website, Yeti describes itself as a leading domestic carrier. Its fleet consists of six ATR 72-500s, including the one that crashed. It also owns Tara Air, and the two together offer the "widest network" in Nepal, the company says.