The copilot of the Yeti Airlines plane that crashed in Nepal on Sunday was the widow of a pilot who flew for the same airline. Bizarre coincidence: he died in a plane crash sixteen years ago.
Anju Khatiwada joined Yeti Airlines in 2010, four years after her husband died while flying a plane operated by the same airline. “Her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, died in 2006 in a crash of a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter plane in Jumla,” airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told Reuters news agency. The small airliner he was piloting crashed minutes before landing. “She (Khatiwada, ed.) Did her pilot training with the money she received from the insurance after the death of her husband.”
Khatiwada was the co-pilot of the flight from Kathmandu that crashed on approach to the city of Pokhara that Sunday. At least 68 people were killed, making it the deadliest plane crash in the Himalayas in three decades. No survivors have been found among the 72 people on board. Khatiwada has more than 6,400 flight hours to her credit and had previously flown the popular tourist route from the capital, Kathmandu, to the country’s second largest city, Pokhara.
The body of Kamal KC, the captain of the flight, who had more than 21,900 flight hours, has been recovered and identified. Kathiwada has not yet been identified, but it is feared she is dead, Yeti spokesman Bartaula said.
She was always ready to take on any task
“On Sunday, she was flying the plane with an instructor pilot, which is standard operating procedure for the airline,” said a Yeti Airlines employee who knew Khatiwada personally. “She was always ready to take on any task and had previously flown to Pokhara,” he says. The colleague is not mentioned by name by Reuters because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
The ATR-72 plane Khatiwada was piloting shook violently before crashing into a canyon near Pokhara airport and catching fire. That can be read in eyewitness accounts and seen in a video of the crash posted on social media. The aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered yesterday. These can help investigators determine the cause of the crash.
Nearly 350 people have been killed in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal since 2000. The country is home to 8 of the 14 highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, and sudden weather changes can create dangerous conditions.
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