Nepal plane with 22 passengers including 4 Indians goes missing

A small Nepalese private aircraft headed to Jomsom in Nepal with 22 passengers including four Indians onboard, went missing in the mountainous region of the Himalayan nation on Sunday after taking off from Pokhara, reports said.

According to airport authorities, the Tara Air’s 9 NAET twin-engine aircraft, run by a private airline, went off the radar soon after its take off at 10.15 am.

“The aircraft was seen over the sky of Jomsom in Mustang district and then had diverted to Mt. Dhaulagiri after which it hadn’t come into contact,” ANI quoted chief district officer Netra Prasad Sharma as saying.

Report said that four Indians and two German nationals had boarded the aircraft. The rest of the passengers are Nepali citizens.

The three member crew of the aircraft was led by captain Prabhakar Prasad Ghimire. The aircraft lost contact with the tower from the sky above Ghorepani on the Pokhara-Jomsom air route, aviation sources said. According to an air traffic controller at Jomsom Airport, they have an unconfirmed report about a loud noise in Ghasa of Jomsom. It is suspected that the aircraft crashed in the Dhaulagiri area, My Republica newspaper quoted DSP Ram Kumar Dani of Mustang as saying. Dani said that a helicopter had flown from Jomsom to search for the aircraft.