A Saurya Airlines CRJ-200 crashed and exploded into flames after appearing to take a wrong turn after takeoff in Kathmandu. 18 passengers have perished while the pilot survived.
18 Dead After Saurya Airlines CRJ-200 Crash In Kathmandu, Nepal
At just after 11:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, 2024, a Saurya Airlines “test flight” took off from Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) in Kathmandu, Nepal. 19 passengers were onboard including one pilot, two flight attendants, and 16 airline technical staff. The flight was bound for Pokhara (VNPK) as part of a maintenance mission.
Jagannath Niraula, chief of Tribhuvan Airport, told the BBC, “As soon as it took off, it turned right…it should have turned left.” Moments later, the plane crashed. Rescue workers rushed to the scene, but it was too late. While the pilot managed to crawl out (with only minor eye and forehead injuries), the other passengers were deemed lost.
https://twitter.com/ReporterARK/status/1816009567135842569
Saruya Airlines operates a single Bombardier CRJ-200 jet and serves five destinations within Nepal.
Nepal has a poor aviation safety record. In January 2023, 72 people were killed in a Yeti Airlines crash that investigators blamed on pilot error (the pilots mistakenly cut the power of the ATR-72 aircraft). In 1992, a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane crashed on approach to KTM, killing 167 onboard.
My thoughts and prayers are with the familes of the lost. We never know if today will be our last…
https://twitter.com/boppinmule/status/1816031538208756177
Maintenance , Construction , and Safety are the three most important aspects of aviation .
Then comes weather and pilot skills .
Eliminate dogs , carry-on bags , and bonuses for executives .
For some reason a Bob Seger song comes to mind.
RIP
“one pilot” crew only?
The CRJ is a two pilot aircraft. There are no conditions where one pilot would be allowed.
My take on this as a pilot type rated in the CRJ and with a couple of thousand hours in the -200 variant is that this pilot was hot dogging it.
First the CRJ is a two-pilot airplane so either the reporting is wrong, or the alarm bells should really be ringing.
Second when it comes into view from what looks to be a cell phone, he’s at a 90 degree or close to it angle of bank. That this comes from a cell phone means the owner had time to see something worth recording and get the phone to start recording which takes several seconds at least. That tells me the pilot went into this bank or was doing something else unusual well before the video started.
Third at that angle of bank a CRJ has no hope of climbing or maintaining altitude. If he’s at an 80-degree angle of bank he’d need 6g’s to maintain level flight which is WAY beyond what a CRJ can do. It’s an airliner not a modern fighter with afterburners. So, in that turn he’s going to be losing altitude likely pretty rapidly. And that’s what we see. The aircraft steeply banked with a significant rate of descent. We know he has control because just before impact he rolls rapidly (and the roll rate looks like what a CRJ-200 is capable of) to wings level and attempts to pull up. But he doesn’t have enough time to arrest his rate of descent (just pulling the nose up won’t instantly level the aircraft) and it impacts the ground. That the pilot survives is consistent with this because he likely impacts tail first meaning the aft fuselage takes the biggest hit and the cockpit which has its own escape hatch comes down last in a survivable impact. The people in the back are doomed not only by the impact but also by the post-crash fire that likely killed anyone who survived initially.
First takes on aircraft accidents are always dicey and there is a lot we don’t know. But I’m really struggling to imagine a scenario that wasn’t pilot induced that could have put the aircraft where we see it in the video.
Pilot needs to be held accountable for this incident. Delta pilots would never allow this to happen.
I will want to see the reenactment on Mayday Air Disaster or Mentour Now on YouTube…
I believe that Nepal has one of the riskiest landing runways in the world and this may be the one.
Looks like a stall.