KATHMANDU, JANUARY 18
A team of experts arrived from France today to study Sunday's Yeti Airlines crash in Pokhara. The team has reached the accident site and started conducting their investigation into the crash.
According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the team of foreign experts are representatives of the ATR aircraft manufacturing company.
Jagannath Niroula, spokesperson for CAAN, said that the team might have coordinated with Yeti Airlines regarding their participation in the crash investigation.
The team had not sent any official notice to CAAN prior to their arrival, he said.
The government of Nepal has also formed a committee to investigate the accident.
The committee will release a report on the accident within 45 days, Niroula told The Himalayan Times.
On Sunday, a Yeti Airlines flight with 72 people on board, including four crew members, had crashed into a ravine in Pokhara. Fifteen of the passengers were foreign nationals, while 53 were Nepali nationals, including three infants. Recovery efforts have continued over the past four days, and 71 bodies have been recovered from the site. The flight voice recorder and the cockpit voice recorder have also been recovered, according to the district police office of Kaski. The search for the last missing person is under way, according to CAAN officials.
Meanwhile, 49 bodies have been brought to Kathmandu and sent to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital for post-mortem, whereas 22 bodies were handed over to families in Pokhara. The bodies brought to Kathmandu will be handed over to the respective families after autopsy.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 19, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
