Yogendra Shrestha arrested

Former Chairman of Nepal Share Market and Finance Yogendra Prasad Shrestha, who was accused of misappropriating over a huge scale of funds, has been arrested. He was accused of embezzling Rs 2 billion in Nepal Share Markets and Finance.

Shrestha was arrested from his hideout in India and has already been brought to the Capital, police said.

The authorities had issued arrest warrants in the name of Shrestha and his family members. But his family members are at large.

A Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) probe committee had found him guilty of misappropriating a huge fund.

The NRB had earlier recommended the Finance Ministry to penalise Shrestha and his family members involved in the misappropriation under the Banking Offence and Punishment Act.

According to the existing law, Shrestha could be slapped up to 5 years of jail sentence.

All 19 killed in Buddha plane crash

A 9N AEK-B190 Beechcraft of Buddha Air hit a tree and then crashed into Kotdanda hill of Bishankhunarayan-2, Lalitpur district, at 5,400 feet Sunday morning leaving all 19 on board dead.

Among those killed are 10 Indians, three Americans, a Japanese, and two Nepali nationals, apart from three Nepali crew members. While 18 died on the spot, Niranjan Karmacharya, a passenger who was rescued alive by locals from the wreckage, died in the course of treatment at B & B Hospital.

The aircraft had left Kathmandu at 6:49 am for mountain flight. It was returning to Kathmandu following zero visibility of Mt Everest when it lost contact with the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) tower at 7:31 am and then crashed.

A Tara Air Pilatus aircraft that was flying from Lukla to Kathmandu and was tailing the Beechcraft first reported the crash to the airport tower at 7:50 am, according to Bimalesh Karna, Air Traffic Control (ATC) manager at TIA.

But confirmation of the crash came only at 8:50 am from the police and locals who had reached Kotdanda by then.

The aircraft´s black box, or Flight Data Recorder, has been recovered from the crash site.

What happened?

According to ATCs at the airport, the aircraft flew two additional miles south of the airport and was at the wrong elevation for that point. This led to the crash.

“The pilots were asked to fly four miles south of the airport tower and align with the runway for landing,” said Karna.

“But the crew flew the plane six miles south of the airport tower. The right elevation for that point is 6,500 feet. But the plane was at 5,400 feet, which was wrong for six miles south of the tower,” he said. The elevation would have been right had the plane been flown just four miles south of the tower.In September 1992, a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus crashed at Bhattedanda, located nine miles south of the airport tower killing all 167 on board.

Raj Kumar Khatri, resident of Lamatar VDC, and an eyewitness of Sunday´s crash, saw the Buddha Air Beechcraft fly just about 200 meters above him.

“There were some branches on top of the plane´s front. The plane had already lost balance. By the time we overcame our surprise over the low elevation of the plane, it crashed at Kotdanda hill in front of our eyes,” Khatri said.

Though Sunday´s visibility cannot be called poor, hanging clouds on the Valley´s sky were repeatedly enveloping the aircraft, which could have led to human error as the plane was flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), one of the two basic regulations governing civil aviation operations around the world.

Flights are conducted under VFR when visibility is over five kilometers, according to ATC manager Karna.

At the time of the crash, visibility around the airport was six kilometers, said Karna.

Under VFR, a pilot navigates an aircraft solely by reference to outside visual cues. But visual cue is difficult to get when a plane is enveloped by cloud and fog. There was plenty of fog around Kotdanda at the time of the crash, locals said.

The other flight regulation, called Instrument Flight Rules (IFR), is applicable when visibility is less than five kilometers. Under IFR, pilots operate flights solely based on data provided by flight instruments. An Agni Air turboprop that crashed in Makawanpur district in August 2010 killing 14 people was flying under IFR owing to poor visibility.

Last contact

There were absolutely no duress signals from the cockpit, according to ATCs.

The tower had two sightings of the plane after it entered Kathmandu Valley, said Purushottam Shakya, another ATC manager, who was marshalling the tower at the time of the crash.

The first sighting was after the plane had entered five miles inside Kathmandu Valley, Shakya said. This was minutes before the tower lost contact with the aircraft.

After seeing the aircraft, the tower instructed Captains J B Tamrakar and Padma Adhikari to fly the aircraft to a point four miles south of the airport from where all planes flying under VFR are aligned with the airport´s runway for landing when the airport uses the 02 runway, or instructs planes to land from the south, like on Sunday. The alignment is different when planes are asked to land from the north, or use the 20 runway.

Thereafter the tower lost sight of the aircraft and also verbal and radar contact.

“But even after that, the aircraft briefly appeared from the clouds and again disappeared to never reappear,” said Shakya.

Following loss of all contact with the aircraft, the Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) at the airport was immediately brought into operation and all plane activity at the airport was halted for half-an-hour.

The Tara Air Pilatus aircraft that was tailing the Beechcraft was then asked to try to have a visual of the Beechcraft, according to Karna.

“This is common practice,” said Karna. “The Pilatus hovered over Kathmandu´s sky for about 20 minutes and reported to the tower that the Beechcraft may have crashed in the area where the crash was later confirmed,” he added.

Bodies of 18 who died on the spot were airlifted to the airport by a RAN 38-M18 chopper of the Nepal Army. The bodies were later taken to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) for postmortem. Karmacharya´s body was separately taken to TUTH from B & B hospital for postmortem.

The government has formed a three-member committee led by Rajesh Raj Dali, former director general of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, to probe the crash.

Beechcraft safety

The Beechcraft 1900D that was introduced in 1991 following substantial redesigning of Beechcraft 1900C is still regarded one of the safest planes. The US-based manufacturer Raytheon Company built around 440 1900D aircraft and it is estimated that around 400 of them are still in operation worldwide both in military and non-military services.

Impressed by its safety records, the US military has been operating the Beechcraft under the designation of C-12 for its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sunday´s Beechcraft crash is the first of a Buddha Air-operated aircraft in 14 years of its operation.

Happy Bijaya Dashain & Tihar 2068

Respect and Appreciation - CYCC

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