Summary Under Investigation Survivors 0 Date 24 February 2016 Fatalities 23 (all) Survivor 0 | Passengers 20 Registration 9N-AHH Crew count 3 | |
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Tara Air Flight 193 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight, serving the route from Pokhara Airport in Pokhara, Nepal, to Jomsom Airport in Jomsom, Nepal. On 24 February 2016, eight minutes after take-off, the aircraft serving the flight, a Viking Air DHC-6-400 Twin Otter with registration 9N-AHH, went missing with 23 people on board. Nepal's police and army dispatched three helicopters to search for the missing aircraft; the search was hampered by bad weather. Hours later, the wreckage was found near Dana village, Myagdi district, alongside several charred bodies. There were no survivors. With 23 fatalities, this was Tara Air's deadliest aircraft crash, surpassing the 2010 Okhaldhunga Twin Otter crash which killed 22 people. The crash was also the twenty-second loss of a DHC-6 in Nepal, the seventh-deadliest aircraft crash in Nepal, and the world's fourth-deadliest accident involving a DHC-6.
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Aircraft
The DHC-6 Twin Otter was a Series 400 version built in 2012 by Viking Air with manufacturer's serial number 926. In September 2015, it was delivered to Tara Air and registered 9N-AHH.
Passengers
Of the 20 passengers on board, 18 – including 2 children – were from Nepal, one was from Hong Kong, and another was from Kuwait.
Flight
The aircraft took off from Pokhara at 7:50 am local time. The normal flight duration on the route is 18 minutes. The control tower officers at Pokhara lost contact with the aircraft 10 minutes after takeoff, the wreckage was found at Tirkhe Dhunga, Dana VDC of Myagdi district at 1:25 pm by a police team deployed from Dana Police Post. Tara Air reported that the weather at both origin and destination airports was favourable.
Recovery
Helicopters were used to search the route for hours, but rescue efforts were slowed down by poor weather conditions, including dense fog and heavy rain. The wreckage was found burning after impacting a mountainside, with charred bodies visible inside. Bishwa Raj Khadka, the district Chief of Police, stated that personnel involved in the rescue operations had recovered 17 bodies from the crash site.
Investigation
A "high level probe panel" was formed to investigate the crash. The wreckage of the aircraft was found "in an area of some 200 meters [660 feet]", in Solighopte in Myagdi District, a part of Dhaulagiri Zone.