Rescue teams find black boxes of Nepal plane crash
Kathmandu, Jan 16 (EFE).- Rescue teams found Monday the black boxes of a plane that crashed last weekend in Nepal and killed 68 of the 72 people on board, official sources told EFE.
According to Prem Nath Thakur, spokesman for the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, operators recovered the black boxes from the aircraft in the morning shortly after resuming the rescue work with which they tried to find the bodies of the last missing passengers.
This finding will help clarify the causes of the incident, since the boxes record technical information such as the plane’s route, speed, altitude and engine status before crashing, as well as voice recordings inside the pilots’ cabin.
The crash occurred Sunday afternoon while the aircraft was trying to land at Pokhara International Airport from Kathmandu.
The bodies of four other people have yet to be found, they are feared to have fallen into a deep gorge located in the vicinity of the accident site.
According to the Nepal Civil Aviation Authority, travelers included 53 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, one Irishman, one Australian, one Argentine, two Koreans and one Frenchman.
The delivery of the identified bodies to their families began Monday once an autopsy was carried out, while the bodies of foreign nationals were also expected to be transferred to the capital Monday.
The Nepalese government declared Monday as a day of national mourning in memory of the victims.
This is the second air accident in the country in less than a year, after a Tara Air company plane crashed on May 29 in the town of Jomsom, an accident that killed all 22 passengers on board.
This number of accidents in Nepal has led the country to be subject to international sanctions for the lack of controls, and in 2013 the European Union prohibited the access of Nepali airlines to its territory.
Since November 1960, when the first air accident in the country was recorded, more than 900 people have died in accidents of this type, according to statistics from the civil aviation agency of Nepal. EFE
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