Rescuers in Nepal have found the crash site of the plane that disappeared on Sunday along with the 22 people on board. The plane’s remains were recovered through an operation embarked on by the Nepali carrier, Tara Air, and was done in the Mustang district of northern Nepal.
The passenger plane had been on a 20-minute flight when it lost contact with air traffic control five minutes before it was due to land. As of the time of writing, it is still unknown if there were any survivors of the crash. Counted among the passengers were four Indians, two Germans, and 16 Nepalis according to reports. However, many search operations were called off on Sunday due to a combination of bad weather and rugged mountain terrain. The search was only resumed on Monday morning.
Narayan Silwal, a Spokesperson from the Nepalese Army stated on Twitter that the search and rescue troops had located the remains of the plane and crash site. It got into trouble shortly after it departed the tourist town of Pokhara for its destination; Jomson, a popular tourist and pilgrimage site.
It also hasn’t been the first time Nepal has experienced plane crashes due to bad weather and the terrain of the mountains surrounding the region. In early 2018 for example, one US-Bangla flight carrying 71 people from Dhaka to Bangladesh caught fire as it landed in Kathmandu, killing 51 people.
And more recently, three people died in a plane crash in April 2019 when the aircraft left the runway and collided with a helicopter parked nearby in the Lukla airport—a runway considered to be one of the trickiest to navigate.