:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/X26XVRWOXFBUHBSQ5D4AIAG6XE.jpg "A plane with 22 people on board disappears in the mountains of Nepal")
A plane with 22 people on board disappeared this Sunday in a mountainous area of Nepalannounced the airline Tara Air, explaining that the complicated weather conditions make the search tasks difficult.
“A domestic flight to jomsom that took off in Pokhara (central-west) lost contact,” Sudarshan Bartaula, a spokesman for Tara Air, told AFP.
There were 19 passengers and three crew members on the plane, he added.
“We are trying to locate the area where the plane could be found,” Bartaula added.
Two helicopters have been mobilized for the search operations, which will be difficult due to poor visibility, said Phanindra Mani Pokharel, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
“Bad weather is likely to hamper the search operation. There is so little visibility that you can’t see anything.” Pokharel specified.
jomsom It is a popular destination for lovers of hiking in the Himalayaabout 20 minutes by plane from Pokharawhich is located 200 kilometers west of Kathmandu. Air transport in Nepal has grown a lot in recent years, thanks to the high number of tourists, a large part of them mountain lovers, and also to trade in remote places that cannot be accessed in any other way. But this poor Himalayan country has a dismal safety record due to poorly trained pilots and aircraft maintenance problems.
The European Union has banned all Nepalese airlines from accessing its airspace for security reasons. The country also has very dangerous tracks, located between snow-covered mountains.
In March 2018, a plane from the Bangladeshi company US-Bangla Airlines crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 51 people.
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.