A plane with 22 people on board disappeared this Sunday in a mountainous area of Nepal and the complicated weather conditions make the search difficult.
The Tara Air company flight, which had departed for Jomsom from Pokhara (central-west), “lost contact”a company spokesman told the AFP news agency
There were 19 passengers and three crew members on the plane.
“We are trying to locate the area where the plane could be found,” spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula added.
Two helicopters have been mobilized for search operations, which will be complicated by poor visibility, said Phanindra Mani Pokharel, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
“Bad weather is likely to hamper the search operation. Visibility is so poor 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.
Among the most recent air accidents recorded in Nepal is that of March 2018, when a plane from the Bangladeshi company US-Bangla Airlines crashed near the Kathmandu airport and there were 51 deaths.
The most dramatic accident occurred in 1992, when 167 people lost their lives when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu airport.
Two months earlier, a Thai Airways plane had crashed in this same area, killing 113 people.
