Nepal send data recorder from plane crash to France
Nepal Plane Crash: The flight plummeted into a gorge on Sunday while on approach to land at the newly opened Pokhara International Airport.
Nepalese authorities on Tuesday began returning to families the bodies of victims of a flight that crashed Sunday, and said they were sending the aircraft's data recorder to France for analysis.
The flight plummeted into a gorge on Sunday while on approach to land at the newly opened Pokhara International Airport in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Searchers found the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder on Monday, and combed through debris scattered down the 300-meter-deep (984-foot-deep).
Jagannath Niraula, spokesperson for Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority said the cockpit voice recorder would be analyzed locally, but that the flight data recorder would be sent to France.
The aircraft's manufacturer, ATR, is headquartered in Toulouse. The French air accident investigations agency confirmed it is taking part in the investigation.
The twin-engine ATR 72-500 aircraft, operated by Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, was completing the 27-minute flight from the capital, Kathmandu, to the resort town of Pokhara.
From a smartphone video shot from the ground seconds before the aircraft crashed, one can see the ATR 72 “nose high, high angle of attack, with wings at a very high bank angle.