Black box of crashed Tara Air aircraft recovered by mountain guides

PTI, May 31, 2022, 2:46 PM IST

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Kathmandu: A team of experienced international and national mountain guides on Tuesday retrieved the black box of the Tara Air plane that crashed in Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district on Sunday, killing 22 people on board, including four Indians.

Chief District Officer Netra Prasad Sharma of Mustang said that rescuers on Tuesday also recovered the last body from the wreckage site of the plane.

According to Chief District Officer Sharma, the bodies of 10 people have already been sent to Kathmandu on Monday while the rest of the bodies have been shifted to Kobang from the crash site and are in the course of being airlifted to Kathmandu. The black box of the turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane was recovered from the crash site by a team of experienced international and national mountain guides, The Himalayan Times reported.

The black box will be transported to Kathmandu. The Tara Airplane was found in a crashed state on Monday morning, 19 hours after it went missing amidst bad weather.

Due to the geographical remoteness and adverse weather conditions, the search and the recovery mission were delayed. The plane was found scattered at an altitude of 4,200 meters, a four-hour uphill hike from the center of Thalang Village Municipality.

Nepal Army, Armed Police Force, Nepal Police, Sherpas, and locals reached the crash site on Monday and collected the bodies of those who lost their lives in the accident.

Now it is confirmed that all 22 people, including four Indian nationals and three crew members, have been killed in the tragedy, officials said. Tara Airlines has identified the four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar (Tripathy), and their children Dhanush and Ritika. The family was based in Thane city near Mumbai.

The Canadian-built plane, flying from Pokhara to the popular tourist town Jomsom in central Nepal, was carrying four Indians, two Germans, and 13 Nepali passengers, besides a three-member Nepali crew. The government has formed a five-member commission of inquiry headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman to find out the cause of the Tara Airplane crash.