KATMANDU: Relatives of the 18 dead in an airplane crash in Nepal have yet to hear from the government or the airline on the possible cause of the disaster, they said a day after the small jet went down during take-off at the airport in Katmandu, the capital.
The incident has cast a spotlight on the mountainous, landlocked nation’s poor record on air safety, with almost 360 people killed since 2000 in plane and helicopter crashes.
The 50-seater CRJ-200 aircraft that crashed this week was operated by Saurya Airlines, and was ferrying 15 technicians, two crew and two of a technician’s family to the central city of Pokhara, where it was scheduled for regular maintenance.
Only the captain survived after it crashed in a field beside the runway and caught fire.
“Nobody has contacted us,” said Krishna Bahadur Magar, a relative of Nava Raj Ale who was a ground handler at Saurya and died in the crash.
“Our relative was a member of the Saurya Airlines family,” Magar said. “Why is the airline now behaving as if they don’t care about him?”
Magar was among the dozens who crowded into a narrow alley outside the forensic unit of Katmandu’s Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital on Thursday, waiting for authorities to release the bodies of the dead.
Some said doctors had told them they would not receive the remains of loved ones before Saturday, while those bodies charred beyond recognition would require DNA tests to be identified, a process that could take two weeks.
The victims’ families felt as if Saurya officials were “deliberately hiding” from them, said Jageswar Giri, whose brother-in-law, Uddhab Puri, died in the crash.
“We want to know what technical problems the aircraft was facing, why so many people were on it yesterday, and why it was decided that maintenance work would be done in Pokhara instead of Katmandu where the plane was grounded,” he said.
Officials from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) have said the plane was being sent to Pokhara because its new airport was equipped with aircraft maintenance hangars.
Responding to the families’ questions, the regulator said it was the airline’s responsibility to co-ordinate with them.
“It was not a passenger flight,” said CAAN spokesperson Gyanendra Bhul. “Saurya Airlines has officially said all people on board the plane were their staff, so they should co-ordinate with the family members.”
The airline did not respond to telephone calls and messages from Reuters seeking comment.
A government panel set up on Wednesday to investigate the crash will submit a report within 45 days.
Nepal’s worst crash in 1992 killed 167. Last January, 72 people died when a Yeti Airlines plane crashed just before landing in Pokhara.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai will take the witness stand for the first time in November in a high-profile national security trial where he is accused of sedition and colluding with foreign forces, a court said Thursday.
The charges against Lai — founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily — revolve around the newspaper’s publications, which supported the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and criticized Beijing’s leadership.
Besides sedition, the 76-year-old is also accused of two counts of colluding with foreign forces — which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment — by calling for international sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials.
Lai, who pleaded not guilty to the charges in a trial that started in January, “elects to give evidence in this case,” said his lawyer Robert Pang.
His testimony will start on November 20 and could run for weeks, said Esther Toh, one of the three senior judges handpicked by the Hong Kong government to try security cases.
Lai has been in custody for more than 1,300 days.
Following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, Beijing imposed a sweeping security law to quell dissent.
The prosecution has so far called eight witnesses and played over 40 hours of Lai’s talk shows and video interviews since January to mount a case against him and eight others.
Dozens of Hong Kong and foreign politicians and scholars — including former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — were named as his foreign contacts and “agents.”
But Lai’s lawyer argued Wednesday that the prosecution failed to prove he had continued to call for sanctions after Beijing criminalized such advocacy with the security law.
Judges on Thursday ruled against Lai’s defense team, calling on him to answer to all charges.
The other defendants in the case are six former executives of the newspaper and two activists, as well as three Apple Daily companies that have been taken over by the Hong Kong government.