US-Bangla aircraft crashed due to unusual landing; 49 confirmed dead

KATHMANDU, March 12: The US-Bangla aircraft crashed due to unusual landing, sources confirmed.

At least 49 passengers died when the 78-seater Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft crashed while landing at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Monday.

The airplane, enroute from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Kathmandu, caught fire after it skided off the runway crashing onto a football field at 2:20 pm.

The plane was carrying 71 people including four crew members, according to TIA Spokesperson Prem Nath Thakur. Of them 33 were Nepali, 32 Bangladeshi, one Chinese and one Maldivian nationals.

The aircraft was permitted to land from the southern side of the runway flying over Koteshwor, but it landed from the northern side, said the Kathmandu Post quoting Sanjiv Gautam, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

However the reason behind the unusual landing is yet to be ascertained.

Quoting one of the survivors of the plane crash, Basanta Bohara, a Nepalese travel agent, the Post said that the plane had started behaving strangely as it approached Kathmandu. Then, all of a sudden the place shook violently and a loud bang went off afterwards before crashing.

According to Bohara, who is undergoing treatment at the Norvic Hospital, he survived as he managed to break himself out of the window.

22 injured passengers are undergoing treatment at various hospitals including OM Hospital, Norvic Hospital and Kathmandu Medical College, according to SSP Bishwaraj Pokharel, spokesperson at Kathmandu Metropolitan Police Range Office.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli along with Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa also reached the TIA to visit the crash site. The Prime Minister expressed his grief over the tragic incident.