Chinese, Britons among 19 dead in Sita Air crash in Kathmandu
Plane goes down in flames near airport; pilot reported hitting vulture
A plane flying 19 people towards Mount Everest went down in flames on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital yesterday, killing everyone on board including seven Britons and five Chinese, police said.
The pilot of the domestic Sita Air flight reported trouble two minutes after take-off and appeared to have been trying to turn back, said Kathmandu airport official Ratish Chandra Suman. The crash site is only 500 metres from the airport.
Witnesses described seeing flames coming from one of the propeller-driven Dornier plane's wings moments before it hit the ground, while airport authorities said the pilot had reported hitting a vulture shortly after take off.
"We could hear people inside the aircraft screaming, but we couldn't throw water at the plane to put out the fire because we were scared that the engines were about to explode," said Tulasha Pokharel, a 26-year-old housewife who said she was one of the first on the scene.
Suman said he could not confirm whether the plane was already on fire before it crashed. Cellphone video shot by locals showed that the front section of the plane was on fire when it first hit the ground and that the pilot apparently had attempted to land the plane on open ground beside a river.
Emergency workers lined up the 19 corpses - which included seven Nepalese along with the Britons and Chinese - near the smouldering wreckage as they picked through passengers' belongings to identify the dead.
Xinhua identified the Chinese victims as Wu Hui, Wu Qianming, Wu Lin, Wang Jhihua and Yang Chen.