by A plane crash that killed dozens of people in Nepal in January was caused by a pilot pulling the wrong levers while trying to land, the country’s investigators said Thursday.
The pilot changed the propeller angle instead of the flaps, causing a Yeti Airlines plane to lose momentum and crash, killing all 72 people on board, a report by a committee formed by the Nepalese government.
The ATR-72 plane, a twin-engine propeller plane, was on a half-hour flight from the capital, Kathmandu, carrying 68 passengers and four crew members when it crashed on January 15. The pilots were attempting to land in Pokhara, a picturesque Himalayan resort town.
While preparing to land, less than 721 feet above the ground, one of the pilots had requested that the flaps be adjusted. The second pilot mistakenly moved the trim levers, which control the propellers and are located next to the flap lever, to a position called “feathered,” investigators said.
Aligning a propeller, which reduces drag, is typically performed when the engine is turned off, according to the report, and can be done automatically or manually.
That error let air pass through the propellers, instead of pushing it back to propel the plane and keep it in the air, according to the report. Shortly after, one of the pilots reported that there was no power coming out of the engine.
The new Pokhara airport was weeks into construction at the time and the crew had not received specialized training for the airport, the report said. It was also the first pilot’s first attempt to land on that runway and the third time for the second pilot. The crew was likely distracted, the report said, because the pilots were busy giving instructions instead of focusing on their tasks.
Those factors caused pilots to misidentify the sticks and miss indicators that the propellers had been deployed, the researchers concluded, citing factors including high workload and stress.
The plane then lost thrust, stalled, crashed to the ground and was destroyed by impact and fire, the report said. Video recordings on social media at the time showed the plane engulfed in flames and plumes of black smoke rising from the crash site. Emergency workers were shown trying to recover the victims’ bodies.
From November 1960 to May 2022, 106 planes crashed in Nepal, causing 590 deaths, according to a safety report published this year by the country’s Civil Aviation Authority. Of those planes, 50 were twin-engine planes, which many people in Nepal depend on to reach remote areas of the country.
Mountainous terrain, unpredictable weather conditions, poor visibility and aging fleets are among the dangers of flying there.
In 2022, a plane carrying 22 people crashed during a 20-minute flight operated by Tara Air from Pokhara to Jomsom, a tourist destination popular with day trippers. There were no survivors. On the same route in 2016, a crash shortly after takeoff killed all 23 people on board.
