Rescuers in Nepal scrambled on Sunday to find a Nepal Airlines plane carrying 18 people that went missing in the country’s mountainous west, officials said.
The plane with 15 passengers and three crew on board lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from the popular tourist town of Pokhara, airline officials and police said.
“The Nepal Airlines plane with 14 (adult) passengers took off from Pokhara airport at 1.30pm and disappeared 15 minutes later,” Nepal police spokesman Ganesh KC said.
A total of 18 people were on board, the 14 adult passengers, plus one infant and three crew, an airline spokesman said.
“One of the passengers is from Denmark,” spokesman Ram Hari Sharma said. The rest of those on board are from Nepal.
Heavy rain was hampering efforts to search for the plane, with two helicopters forced to turn back because of bad weather, Bimlesh Lal Karna, chief air traffic controller at the country’s largest airport in Kathmandu, said.
“The weather was not bad at the time the plane went missing... It worsened later on,” Karna said. “Two helicopters that were sent from Pokhara returned due to bad weather,” he said.