All six people in a tourist helicopter in Nepal lost their precious lives when it got crashed as soon as it took-off in the Everest region on Tuesday, the aviation authorities said. The Manang Air flight was going towards the capital Kathmandu from near Lukla, which is the place for climbing adventures to the world’s highest peak, with five members of the same Mexican family and a Nepali pilot onboard. The chopper lost contact eight minutes after taking off on Tuesday morning, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said in a statement.
“The six bodies have been found and have been taken to Kathmandu,” Mr Pratap Babu Tiwari, general manager at the Tribhuvan International Airport, told AFP. Two helicopters were located for search and rescue but could not land at the crash site due to the weather. “The teams on the ground took the bodies to the helicopters, which had the power to land close by,” Mr Tiwari said. Mr Lhakpa Sherpa, a local resident who came along to search and rescue attempts, said the scene was “very threatening”.
Poor air safety Nepal has a blossoming private helicopter industry, flying tourists and goods to private places of the Himalayan nation where road access is less or non-existent. But the nation is weak for its poor air safety, and Tuesday’s situation is the last in a string of awful accidents. One person lost his life and four were wounded in May when a helicopter crashed in eastern Nepal after giving goods for a hydroelectricity task. Many helicopter related incidents took away many precious lives during rescue and relief operations as the result of Nepal’s disastrous 2015 earthquake.