The plane was carrying 72 passengers onboard, including 4 crew members.
Yeti airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said the Yeti Airlines flight with 72 people on board crashed in Nepal just seconds before it was due to land. The plane had made no distress call from the cockpit either.
The flight was en route to Pokhara from capital Kathmandu and crashed “10 to 20 seconds before landing," Bloomberg quoted the airline spokesman.
There is no information about any survivor so far, said Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesperson at Yeti Airlines.
“The weather in Pokhara was absolutely fine and the engine of the aircraft was also in good condition," he said.
“We don't know what has happened to the airplane," he said.
Yeti Airlines' 9N-ANC ATR-72 aircraft took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am and crashed on the bank of the Seti River between the old airport and the new airport, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
"The plane would have reached the runway in 10 seconds. However, it met with an accident mid-way," the airport's air traffic controller told MyRepublica newspaper.
The cause of the crash of the Yeti Airline flight has not been immediately known, however, the Nepal government on Sunday formed a five-member commission of inquiry to probe the plane crash.
"So far, dead bodies of 68 people have been recovered from the crash site," an official at the Search and Rescue Coordination Committee of the CAAN told news agency PTI over the phone.
Foreign nationals onboard the plane included five Indians, four Russians, two Koreans, an Australian, a French, an Argentine and an Israeli.
The five Indians have been identified as Abhisekh Kushwaha, Bishal Sharma, Anil Kumar Rajbhar, Sonu Jaiswal and Sanjaya Jaiswal.
Some local media reported that the aircraft took a wider turn while attempting to land, which may have caused the accident. It was a new airport built under a Chinese soft loan and inaugurated just two weeks ago.
