Nepal air crash: Indian passenger's video caught plane's last moments
Zoya Mateen - BBC News, Delhi
Mon, January 16, 2023
Sonu Jaiswal, who livestreamed from the plane seconds before it crashed
In the hours after Nepal's deadliest plane crash for 30 years, a video went viral in India - it showed one of the victims, Sonu Jaiswal, livestreaming from the plane just seconds before the crash.
He was part of a group of four friends from Ghazipur in India who were visiting Nepal, and were on the flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara.
In the footage, Pokhara airport's surroundings are visible from the doomed plane as it comes into land, those on board unaware they are just moments from death.
None of the 72 people on board are believed to have survived the crash.
The video shows the plane gliding gently over the honeycombs of buildings dotting brown-green fields, before the man filming it turns the camera around and smiles.
He then turns it around again to show other passengers in the aircraft.
The following details could be distressing to some readers.
Moments pass, then there's a deafening crash.
Within seconds huge flames and smoke fill the screen as the camera keeps recording. What sounds like the screeching of an engine is audible, as well as breaking glass and then screams before the video ends.
Friends and family members of Sonu Jaiswal told reporters that they had watched the video on his Facebook account, confirming its authenticity.
"Sonu did the [livestream] when the plane crashed in a gorge near the Seti River," Mukesh Kashyap, Jaiswal's friend, told reporters.
Local journalist Shashikant Tiwari told the BBC that Kashyap showed him the video on Jaiswal's Facebook profile, which is set to private.
Hundreds of rescuers were sent to the site of the crash
It is not clear how Jaiswal accessed the internet to stream from the plane.
Abhishek Pratap Shah, a former lawmaker in Nepal, told Indian news channel NDTV that rescuers had recovered the phone on which the video was found from the plane's wreckage.
"It [the video clip] was sent by one of my friends, who received it from a police officer. It is a real record," Mr Shah told NDTV.
Officials in Nepal have not confirmed his claim or commented on the footage, which could help crash investigators in their work.
But for the loved ones of the four men - Jaiswal, Abhishek Kushwaha, Anil Rajbhar and Vishal Sharma - none of this matters. They say they are "too shattered" to care.
"The pain is hard to explain," said Chandrabhan Maurya, the brother of Abhishek Kushwaha.
"The government needs to help us as much as they can. We want the bodies of our loved ones to be returned to us."
Co-pilot's husband also died in plane crash 16 years ago
Authorities in Ghazipur in northern Uttar Pradesh state said they are in touch with the four families and the Indian embassy in Kathmandu to offer any possible help.
"We have also told the families that if they want to travel to Kathmandu, we will make all the arrangements for them," district magistrate Aryaka Akhauri told reporters.
Several villagers remembered the four men as "kind, fun-loving souls". They said they were devastated by the tragedy that had struck their otherwise quiet lives.
Some of them also joined protests, demanding compensation for the families.
The families of the Indian victims have asked for compensation from the government
The four men, all thought to be in their 20s or early 30s, had been friends for many years, and often spent time together.
Locals say they had gone to Nepal on 13 January to visit the Pashupatinath temple, a grand shrine on the outskirts of Kathmandu which is dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva.
The trip was reportedly Jaiswal's idea - a father of three, he wanted to pray at the temple for another son.
After visiting the temple, the friends set off on Sunday to Pokhara - a picturesque tourist town nestled near the Annapurna mountain range - to paraglide. They planned to return to Kathmandu.
"But fate had something else in store for him," an unnamed relative of Jaiswal's told news agency PTI.
The four men were among five Indians on board. Officials said 53 of the passengers were Nepalese, along with four Russians and two Koreans. Others on board are reported to have included one passenger each from the UK, Australia, Argentina and France.
On Monday, social media in India was awash with images from the crash site and of the video shot by Jaiswal.
Jaiswal's father, Rajendra Prasad Jaiswal, said he could not bear to watch the clip himself. "I have only heard about it from Sonu's friends. Our lives have come crashing down."
While groups of mourners stood around the neighbourhood in disbelief, Anil Rajbhar's father stayed away.
His son had left for Nepal on 13 January without informing his family. While his father was busy in the family's fields, Anil quietly packed his bags and left with his friends, neighbours said.
His father is still in disbelief at the news.
Additional reporting by Shashikant Tiwari in Uttar Pradesh
EXPLAINER: Why did Nepal plane crash in fair weather?
Rescuers scour the crash site in the wreckage of a passenger plane in Pokhara, Nepal, Monday, Jan.16, 2023. Nepal began a national day of mourning Monday as rescue workers resumed the search for six missing people a day after a plane to a tourist town crashed into a gorge while attempting to land at a newly opened airport, killing at least 66 of the 72 people aboard in the country's deadliest airplane accident in three decades.(AP Photo/Yunish Gurung)
DAVID RISING
Mon, January 16, 2023
BANGKOK (AP) — Yeti Airlines flight 691 crashed Sunday just before landing in Nepal's tourist city of Pokhara, the gateway to a popular hiking area in the Himalayas, after a 27-minute trip from Kathmandu.
At least 69 of the 72 people aboard have been confirmed dead.
Pilots say Nepal can be a challenging place to fly, but conditions at the time of the crash were good, with low wind, clear skies and temperatures well above freezing. So what might have caused the crash of the ATR 72 aircraft?
DID THE PLANE STALL?
A dramatic video shot on a smartphone from the ground shows the last moments before the plane crashed in a gorge about 1.6 kilometers (a mile) from newly opened Pokhara International Airport. The aircraft's nose is noticeably high before the left wing suddenly drops and the plane falls out of sight of the video, indicating a likely stall, said Amit Singh, an experienced pilot and founder of India's Safety Matters Foundation.
“If you see the trajectory of the aircraft, the aircraft's nose goes up, and the nose up would be associated with a reduction in speed,” he told The Associated Press. “When they have stalls, typically one wing goes down and wings are basically generating the lift. So as the air flow reduces, the lift generated is not enough to sustain the aircraft in flight and the wing drops and the aircraft nosedives.”
Professor Ron Bartsch, an aviation safety expert and founder of Australia's Avlaw Aviation Consulting, told Sydney's Channel 9 that he also thought the plane appears to have gone into a stall. Its proximity to the ground possibly made it look to the pilots like their speed was greater than it was, he said.
“I'd suggest that the aircraft has entered into an aerodynamic stall,” he said after reviewing the video just before the crash. “Possibly pilot error.”
Yeti Airlines spokesman Pemba Sherpa said the cause of the crash was under investigation.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE AIRCRAFT
The ATR-72 was introduced in the late 1980s as a French and Italian joint venture and even though it has been involved in several deadly accidents over the years, several due to icing issues, it generally has a “very good track record,” Bartsch said.
Searchers recovered the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder on Monday from the scene of the crash, but it will not be until they are analyzed carefully that investigators know for sure what happened.
“Human factors will be an element that the investigators will have a look at to see whether or not there's been proper training," Bartsch said. "But normally aircraft don't just fall out of the sky, particularly modern aircraft.”
It is possible that some sort of technical failure with the aircraft's instruments gave bad data to the pilots, but even then it is possible to recover from a stall, Singh said.
“The pilots should be trained to handle technical failures,” he said.
Singh noted that Nepal's aviation industry has a poor track record for safety and training despite its “challenging airports and conditions.” Even though it has been improving, he noted its planes are banned from flying into European airspace.
A pilot who routinely flies an ATR-72-500 plane from India to Nepal said the region’s topography, with its mountain peaks and narrow valleys, raises the risk of accidents and sometimes requires pilots to fly by sight rather than relying on instruments.
The pilot, who works for a private Indian airline and didn’t want to be identified due to company policy, called ATR-72-500 an “unforgiving aircraft” if the pilot isn’t highly skilled and familiar with the region’s terrain and wind speed.
ATR said Sunday on Twitter that its specialists were “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer” and that its “first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this.”
The company did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
CONCERNS ABOUT THE NEW AIRPORT
Home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, Nepal has a history of air crashes. According to the Safety Matters Foundation's data, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946.
The country’s “hostile topography” and “diverse weather patterns” were the major challenges, according to a 2019 safety report from Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, also resulting in a “number of accidents” to small aircraft. The report said such accidents happened at airports that had short strips of runway for takeoff and landing and most were due to pilot error.
The airport in Pokhara, a popular tourist destination as the gateway to the Annapurna mountain range, sits at an elevation of some 820 meters (2,700 feet).
Ahead of the airport's opening two weeks ago, some had expressed concern that the number of birds in the area — due to the habitat provided by two rivers as well as a landfill near the airport — could make it additionally hazardous.
At the airport's official opening, the city's mayor said work to mitigate the effect of the landfill had been completed, according to local media reports, but it was not clear specifically what measures were undertaken.
If the aircraft had suffered a bird strike as it was coming in to land, it is possible this would have prompted the pilots to discontinue their approach and go around again, which also could have led to a stall, Singh said.
“A high thrust setting can lead to a stall,” he said. “Go-arounds are most often mishandled by crew ... so again the issue is, how did the pilot cope with the failure?"
_____
Associated Press writer Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Zoya Mateen - BBC News, Delhi
Mon, January 16, 2023
Sonu Jaiswal, who livestreamed from the plane seconds before it crashed
In the hours after Nepal's deadliest plane crash for 30 years, a video went viral in India - it showed one of the victims, Sonu Jaiswal, livestreaming from the plane just seconds before the crash.
He was part of a group of four friends from Ghazipur in India who were visiting Nepal, and were on the flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara.
In the footage, Pokhara airport's surroundings are visible from the doomed plane as it comes into land, those on board unaware they are just moments from death.
None of the 72 people on board are believed to have survived the crash.
The video shows the plane gliding gently over the honeycombs of buildings dotting brown-green fields, before the man filming it turns the camera around and smiles.
He then turns it around again to show other passengers in the aircraft.
The following details could be distressing to some readers.
Moments pass, then there's a deafening crash.
Within seconds huge flames and smoke fill the screen as the camera keeps recording. What sounds like the screeching of an engine is audible, as well as breaking glass and then screams before the video ends.
Friends and family members of Sonu Jaiswal told reporters that they had watched the video on his Facebook account, confirming its authenticity.
"Sonu did the [livestream] when the plane crashed in a gorge near the Seti River," Mukesh Kashyap, Jaiswal's friend, told reporters.
Local journalist Shashikant Tiwari told the BBC that Kashyap showed him the video on Jaiswal's Facebook profile, which is set to private.
Hundreds of rescuers were sent to the site of the crash
It is not clear how Jaiswal accessed the internet to stream from the plane.
Abhishek Pratap Shah, a former lawmaker in Nepal, told Indian news channel NDTV that rescuers had recovered the phone on which the video was found from the plane's wreckage.
"It [the video clip] was sent by one of my friends, who received it from a police officer. It is a real record," Mr Shah told NDTV.
Officials in Nepal have not confirmed his claim or commented on the footage, which could help crash investigators in their work.
But for the loved ones of the four men - Jaiswal, Abhishek Kushwaha, Anil Rajbhar and Vishal Sharma - none of this matters. They say they are "too shattered" to care.
"The pain is hard to explain," said Chandrabhan Maurya, the brother of Abhishek Kushwaha.
"The government needs to help us as much as they can. We want the bodies of our loved ones to be returned to us."
Co-pilot's husband also died in plane crash 16 years ago
Authorities in Ghazipur in northern Uttar Pradesh state said they are in touch with the four families and the Indian embassy in Kathmandu to offer any possible help.
"We have also told the families that if they want to travel to Kathmandu, we will make all the arrangements for them," district magistrate Aryaka Akhauri told reporters.
Several villagers remembered the four men as "kind, fun-loving souls". They said they were devastated by the tragedy that had struck their otherwise quiet lives.
Some of them also joined protests, demanding compensation for the families.
The families of the Indian victims have asked for compensation from the government
The four men, all thought to be in their 20s or early 30s, had been friends for many years, and often spent time together.
Locals say they had gone to Nepal on 13 January to visit the Pashupatinath temple, a grand shrine on the outskirts of Kathmandu which is dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva.
The trip was reportedly Jaiswal's idea - a father of three, he wanted to pray at the temple for another son.
After visiting the temple, the friends set off on Sunday to Pokhara - a picturesque tourist town nestled near the Annapurna mountain range - to paraglide. They planned to return to Kathmandu.
"But fate had something else in store for him," an unnamed relative of Jaiswal's told news agency PTI.
The four men were among five Indians on board. Officials said 53 of the passengers were Nepalese, along with four Russians and two Koreans. Others on board are reported to have included one passenger each from the UK, Australia, Argentina and France.
On Monday, social media in India was awash with images from the crash site and of the video shot by Jaiswal.
Jaiswal's father, Rajendra Prasad Jaiswal, said he could not bear to watch the clip himself. "I have only heard about it from Sonu's friends. Our lives have come crashing down."
While groups of mourners stood around the neighbourhood in disbelief, Anil Rajbhar's father stayed away.
His son had left for Nepal on 13 January without informing his family. While his father was busy in the family's fields, Anil quietly packed his bags and left with his friends, neighbours said.
His father is still in disbelief at the news.
Additional reporting by Shashikant Tiwari in Uttar Pradesh
EXPLAINER: Why did Nepal plane crash in fair weather?
Rescuers scour the crash site in the wreckage of a passenger plane in Pokhara, Nepal, Monday, Jan.16, 2023. Nepal began a national day of mourning Monday as rescue workers resumed the search for six missing people a day after a plane to a tourist town crashed into a gorge while attempting to land at a newly opened airport, killing at least 66 of the 72 people aboard in the country's deadliest airplane accident in three decades.(AP Photo/Yunish Gurung)
DAVID RISING
Mon, January 16, 2023
BANGKOK (AP) — Yeti Airlines flight 691 crashed Sunday just before landing in Nepal's tourist city of Pokhara, the gateway to a popular hiking area in the Himalayas, after a 27-minute trip from Kathmandu.
At least 69 of the 72 people aboard have been confirmed dead.
Pilots say Nepal can be a challenging place to fly, but conditions at the time of the crash were good, with low wind, clear skies and temperatures well above freezing. So what might have caused the crash of the ATR 72 aircraft?
DID THE PLANE STALL?
A dramatic video shot on a smartphone from the ground shows the last moments before the plane crashed in a gorge about 1.6 kilometers (a mile) from newly opened Pokhara International Airport. The aircraft's nose is noticeably high before the left wing suddenly drops and the plane falls out of sight of the video, indicating a likely stall, said Amit Singh, an experienced pilot and founder of India's Safety Matters Foundation.
“If you see the trajectory of the aircraft, the aircraft's nose goes up, and the nose up would be associated with a reduction in speed,” he told The Associated Press. “When they have stalls, typically one wing goes down and wings are basically generating the lift. So as the air flow reduces, the lift generated is not enough to sustain the aircraft in flight and the wing drops and the aircraft nosedives.”
Professor Ron Bartsch, an aviation safety expert and founder of Australia's Avlaw Aviation Consulting, told Sydney's Channel 9 that he also thought the plane appears to have gone into a stall. Its proximity to the ground possibly made it look to the pilots like their speed was greater than it was, he said.
“I'd suggest that the aircraft has entered into an aerodynamic stall,” he said after reviewing the video just before the crash. “Possibly pilot error.”
Yeti Airlines spokesman Pemba Sherpa said the cause of the crash was under investigation.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE AIRCRAFT
The ATR-72 was introduced in the late 1980s as a French and Italian joint venture and even though it has been involved in several deadly accidents over the years, several due to icing issues, it generally has a “very good track record,” Bartsch said.
Searchers recovered the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder on Monday from the scene of the crash, but it will not be until they are analyzed carefully that investigators know for sure what happened.
“Human factors will be an element that the investigators will have a look at to see whether or not there's been proper training," Bartsch said. "But normally aircraft don't just fall out of the sky, particularly modern aircraft.”
It is possible that some sort of technical failure with the aircraft's instruments gave bad data to the pilots, but even then it is possible to recover from a stall, Singh said.
“The pilots should be trained to handle technical failures,” he said.
Singh noted that Nepal's aviation industry has a poor track record for safety and training despite its “challenging airports and conditions.” Even though it has been improving, he noted its planes are banned from flying into European airspace.
A pilot who routinely flies an ATR-72-500 plane from India to Nepal said the region’s topography, with its mountain peaks and narrow valleys, raises the risk of accidents and sometimes requires pilots to fly by sight rather than relying on instruments.
The pilot, who works for a private Indian airline and didn’t want to be identified due to company policy, called ATR-72-500 an “unforgiving aircraft” if the pilot isn’t highly skilled and familiar with the region’s terrain and wind speed.
ATR said Sunday on Twitter that its specialists were “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer” and that its “first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this.”
The company did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
CONCERNS ABOUT THE NEW AIRPORT
Home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, Nepal has a history of air crashes. According to the Safety Matters Foundation's data, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in Nepal since 1946.
The country’s “hostile topography” and “diverse weather patterns” were the major challenges, according to a 2019 safety report from Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, also resulting in a “number of accidents” to small aircraft. The report said such accidents happened at airports that had short strips of runway for takeoff and landing and most were due to pilot error.
The airport in Pokhara, a popular tourist destination as the gateway to the Annapurna mountain range, sits at an elevation of some 820 meters (2,700 feet).
Ahead of the airport's opening two weeks ago, some had expressed concern that the number of birds in the area — due to the habitat provided by two rivers as well as a landfill near the airport — could make it additionally hazardous.
At the airport's official opening, the city's mayor said work to mitigate the effect of the landfill had been completed, according to local media reports, but it was not clear specifically what measures were undertaken.
If the aircraft had suffered a bird strike as it was coming in to land, it is possible this would have prompted the pilots to discontinue their approach and go around again, which also could have led to a stall, Singh said.
“A high thrust setting can lead to a stall,” he said. “Go-arounds are most often mishandled by crew ... so again the issue is, how did the pilot cope with the failure?"
_____
Associated Press writer Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Video from the ground appears to show the plane moments before it crashed
By Aoife Walsh
BBC News Published 1 day ago
BBC News Published 1 day ago
Dozens of people have been killed after a plane with 72 people on board crashed near an airport in central Nepal.
The Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu to the tourist town of Pokhara crashed on landing before catching fire.
Videos posted on social media show an aircraft flying low over a populated area before banking sharply.
At least 68 people are confirmed to have died, officials said. Several critically injured survivors were taken to hospital, unconfirmed reports said.
Local resident Divya Dhakal told the BBC how she rushed to the crash site after seeing the aircraft plunge from the sky shortly after 11:00am local time (05:15 GMT).
"By the time I was there the crash site was already crowded. There was huge smoke coming from the flames of the plane. And then helicopters came over in no time," she said.
"The pilot tried his best to not hit civilisation or any home," she added. "There was a small space right beside the Seti River and the flight hit the ground in that small space."
The flight set out with 68 passengers on board, including at least 15 foreign nationals, and four crew members.
According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, the 15-year-old twin-engine ATR 72 stopped transmitting position data at 05:05 GMT and the last signal from the aircraft was received at 05:12.
Hundreds of Nepalese soldiers were involved in the operation at the crash site in the gorge of the Seti, just one and a half kilometres from the airport.
The search operation has been suspended for the day, officials say.
Video taken where the plane came down showed thick billowing black smoke and burning debris.
"We expect to recover more bodies," an army spokesman told Reuters, saying the plane "has broken into pieces".
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal called an emergency meeting of his cabinet and urged state agencies to work on rescue operations. A panel to investigate the cause of the crash has been set up.
Of the passengers, 53 are said to be Nepalese. There were five Indian, four Russians and two Koreans on the plane. There was also one passenger each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France among others.
Hundreds of Nepalese soldiers were involved in the operation at the crash site in the gorge of the Seti, just one and a half kilometres from the airport.
The search operation has been suspended for the day, officials say.
Video taken where the plane came down showed thick billowing black smoke and burning debris.
"We expect to recover more bodies," an army spokesman told Reuters, saying the plane "has broken into pieces".
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal called an emergency meeting of his cabinet and urged state agencies to work on rescue operations. A panel to investigate the cause of the crash has been set up.
Of the passengers, 53 are said to be Nepalese. There were five Indian, four Russians and two Koreans on the plane. There was also one passenger each from Ireland, Australia, Argentina and France among others.
Aviation accidents are not uncommon in Nepal, often due to its remote runways and sudden weather changes that can make for hazardous conditions.
A Tara Air plane crashed in May 2022 in the northern Nepalese district of Mustang, killing 22 people.
In early 2018, 51 people were killed when a US-Bangla flight travelling from Dhaka in Bangladesh caught fire as it landed in Kathmandu.
The European Union has banned Nepalese airlines from its airspace over concerns about training and maintenance standards in the country's aviation industry.
A Tara Air plane crashed in May 2022 in the northern Nepalese district of Mustang, killing 22 people.
In early 2018, 51 people were killed when a US-Bangla flight travelling from Dhaka in Bangladesh caught fire as it landed in Kathmandu.
The European Union has banned Nepalese airlines from its airspace over concerns about training and maintenance standards in the country's aviation industry.
Video shows passenger plane that crashed in Nepal flying low over a populated area before spinning sharply. At least 68 reported killed.
At least 68 people have died after a plane crashed near an airport in central Nepal, according to reports.
The Yeti Airlines flight from the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu crashed on landing, with videos on social media showing the aircraft spinning sharply just before it hit the
ground. A loud explosion can be heard, as it goes out of view.
Rescue teams work to retrieve bodies at the crash site of an aircraft carrying 72 people in Pokhara in western Nepal January 15, 2023.Bijay Neupane/Handout via REUTERS
72 people were on board the flight, including 68 passengers. 68 bodies have been recovered so far.—Aerowanderer (@aerowanderer) January 15, 2023
"We have sent 31 bodies to the hospital and are still taking out 33 bodies from the gorge," police official Ajay K.C told Reuters.
The plane's wreckage is sited between two hills near the Pokhara airport, making it difficult for rescue workers to reach, Reuters reports.
Local resident Arun Tamu told the news site that half of the aircraft was on a hillside, whilst the other had fallen into the gorge of a river.
—Aishwarya Paliwal (@AishPaliwal) January 15, 2023
Sun, January 15, 2023
STORY: Scores of people were killed on Sunday when a plane crashed in Nepal.
The Yeti Airlines domestic flight was carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu when it went down in Pokhara in clear weather, according to officials from Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority.
Footage shows rescuers scouring the wreckage and scorched earth around the site.
Nepal's Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport, said it was a "tragic" incident and that he'd be calling an emergency cabinet meeting, with an ongoing investigation into the cause.
A Yeti Airlines spokesman confirmed those aboard the twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft included two infants and four crew members.
It was also carrying international passengers including five Indians, four Russians and one Irish, two South Koreans, one Australian, one French and one Argentine national.
Deadly air incidents are common in Nepal, which has small airports in mountainous terrain where weather conditions can change quickly.
And the European Union has banned Nepali airlines from its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.
The Sunday crash is Nepal's worst since 1992, the Aviation Safety Network database showed, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside upon approach to Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.
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