A plane with 22 people on board disappeared this Sunday in a mountainous area of Nepal, the airline Tara Air announced, explaining that the complicated weather conditions make the search difficult.
“A domestic flight bound for Jomsom that took off in Pokhara (central-west) lost contact,” Sudarshan Bartaula, a spokesman for Tara Air, told AFP. There were 19 passengers and three crew members on the plane, he added.
“We are trying to locate the area where the plane could be found,” added Bartaula.
Two helicopters have been mobilized for the search operations, which will be difficult due to poor visibility, said Phanindra Mani Pokharel, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. “Bad weather is likely to hamper the search operation. There is so little visibility that you can’t see anything,” Pokharel said.
Jomsom is a popular destination for trekkers in the Himalayas, about a 20-minute flight from Pokhara, which is 200 kilometers west of Kathmandu.
Air transport in Nepal has grown a lot in recent years, thanks to the high number of tourists, a large part of them mountain lovers, and also to trade in remote places that cannot be accessed in any other way.
But this poor Himalayan country has a dismal safety record due to poorly trained pilots and aircraft maintenance problems.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for security reasons.
