A plane with 22 people on board disappeared on Sunday (29) in a mountainous area of Nepal, the airline Tara Air announced, adding that the complicated weather conditions made the search difficult.
“A domestic flight bound for Jomsom that took off in Pokhara (central west) lost contact,” Tara Air spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told AFP.
There were 19 passengers and three crew on the plane.
“We are trying to locate the area where the plane can be found,” Bartaula said.
Two helicopters were deployed for the search operations, which will be difficult due to poor visibility, explained Phanindra Mani Pokharel, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry.
Jomsom is a popular destination for Himalayan trekkers, 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 large number of tourists, most of them mountaineering lovers, and also the trade in remote places that cannot be accessed otherwise.
But the Himalayan country has a poor safety record due to poorly trained pilots and aircraft maintenance issues.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for security reasons.
In March 2018, a Bangladeshi airline US-Bangla Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 51 people.
The most dramatic accident took place 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 the same area, killing 113 people.
