Scary footage shows that the people on the plane had no idea it was in danger before it crashed.
On Sunday, just before the worst plane crash in Nepal in decades, four friends from India who were on board started excitedly filming the descent on Facebook live.
They were going on the trip of a lifetime to Pokhara, where they would visit temples and paraglide in Nepal’s famous Annapurna mountain range. On the video, one of the men can be heard saying, “It’s really fun,” as he looks down at the city as the plane starts to descend. As the camera focuses on a smiling group of friends, you can hear them laughing and joking. Sonu Jaiswal, a 29-year-old father of three who ran a small business in his home country of India, moved to the U.S.
There are no emergency announcements or warnings from the pilot or staff, so it looks like everything is fine on the plane. But all of a sudden, the plane seems to go off course with a loud roar, and the sounds of it crashing to the ground are caught on the phone camera before the screen is filled with flames. Before the screen goes black, you can briefly see the burning pieces of the plane. After that, no one can be heard.
The scary video shows that the 68 passengers and 4 crew members on the Yeti Airlines flight didn’t know the plane was in danger until an explosion happened right before it landed.
Vishal Koswal, who is 21, is a close friend of the four men who can be heard in the video. He confirmed that the video is real.
He said that the four men were all from Ghazipur district in the state of Uttar Pradesh. They were Jaiswal, who was 29, Anil Rajbhar, who was 28, Vishal Sharma, who was 23, and Abhishek Singh Kushwaha, who was also 23. All four of them had left for Nepal on January 12. The local police were also able to confirm who they were.
Koswal said he had planned to go to Nepal with his four friends but had to stay home because a family member had died. During their trip, he talked to them over video call many times, including a few hours before the crash.
“On the call, Sonu showed us the nearby mountains and was clearly excited, and so were we,” Koswal said. During that call, he told me that after they landed in Pokhara, they would visit some temples there and then take a train back home in the evening.
He said that the four friends were like brothers and that everyone in the area was “very emotional.” “This whole thing seems like a nightmare, and I still can’t believe we lost them all,” he said. “I can’t watch that video of the crash again, it hurts too much. We’ve been hit by a big tragedy.”
A still from a video posted on Facebook by a passenger on the Yeti Airlines flight that crashed. Picture: provided
On Monday, rescuers kept looking for the last four bodies that were still in the wreckage. The government said that there was no hope for those who had survived. On Monday, Nepal’s prime minister called for a day of mourning for the whole country.
There were 15 people from other countries on the plane, and the group of friends from India was one of them. There were 57 Nepalis, 5 Indians, 4 Russians, 2 South Koreans, and 1 person each from Argentina, Ireland, Australia, and France on the flight. It fell into a gorge just before it was supposed to land at the new international airport in Pokhara.
It was the worst aviation accident in Nepal since 1992, when 167 people died when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed as it was coming in to land in Kathmandu.
Police and army officers had a hard time saving people because of the fire, thick smoke, and dangerous terrain. On Sunday night, soldiers used ropes and stretchers to pull bodies out of the 300-meter-deep ravine. On Monday, police officer AK Chhetri said, “We have sent 63 bodies to the hospital so far.”
Arun Tamu, who was about 500 metres from where the plane crashed, told the AFP news agency that he was one of the people who ran to the site to help. “Some of us ran to see if we could help anyone. I saw that at least two of the women were still alive. He said, “The fire was getting very strong, which made it hard for us to get closer.”
The video seems to show the plane just before it crashed in Nepal – video report.
In recent years, Nepal’s air industry has grown a lot. It carries goods and people between areas that are hard to get to, as well as foreign trekkers and climbers. But it has also been unsafe because there hasn’t been enough training or maintenance. In May 2022, a Nepali airline called Tara Air crashed, killing all 22 people on board. In March 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines plane crashed near Kathmandu, killing 51 people.
Related Information: Because of safety concerns, the European Union has banned all flights from Nepal.
