Posted on 01/16/2023 7:38:40 AM PST by BenLurkin
Anju Khatiwada, 44, joined Nepal’s Yeti Airlines in 2010, following in the footsteps of her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, who was killed four years prior when the small passenger plane he was piloting for the air carrier crashed minutes before landing.
On Sunday, Khatiwada was in the co-pilot’s chair on a Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu that went down into a gorge as it approached the city of Pokhara, in what was Nepal’s deadliest aviation disaster in three decades
“She got her pilot training with the money she got from the insurance after her husband’s death,” Bartaula added.
“On Sunday, she was flying the plane with an instructor pilot, which is the standard procedure of the airline,” said an unnamed Yeti Airlines official, who knew Khatiwada personally.
Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said the aircraft last made contact with the airport from near Seti Gorge at 10:50 a.m.
Minutes before the aircraft was to land on Sunday, the pilot asked for a change of runway, a spokesperson for Pokhara airport told Reuters.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I can think of better ways to make a living than flying in Nepal.Cleaning the outside windows at the World Trade Center comes quickly to mind.
That ain’t no crop duster. Banking hard at slow speed? Not enough lift and stalled?
The hard way.
That still was the airplane already in the stall induced snap roll. The entire video shows a very high AOA in level flight before this still captured the spin.
I hope she didn’t have any kids who wanted to be a pilot.
From the video it looks to me like they got too slow which induced a stall. This developed further into a spin.
The single frame with the deep bank angle shows the beginning of the spin.
While the story is tragic, prayers to the deceased, a side note:
What a relief to read a news story once in a while about a “WIFE’s” husband.
I had Kathmandu on my bucket list before COVID, I’ve read that the airports are some of the toughest in the world to land a plane.
You may be correct, they had requested a runway change and likely banked harder to come around... and fell out of the sky.
Is this a little too much coincidence? I do not know the lady or her state of mind, interesting that she and her husband died on decent to land.
Classic “approach turn stall”!
“Lower the nose
Level the wings
Full power!”
to recover.
Ran out of airspeed, altitude and right rudder. Unless they find mechanical failure, this was pilot error, both pilots. The pilot not flying the approach should have been monitoring the airspeed, glideslope, power settings, configuration etc.
I prefer to think it was unrecoverable mechanical failure. I doubt this.
10-4 on the stall induced spin.
In the NY Post article, where you can watch a tragic video made by one of the doomed passengers, they state that the plane burst into flames before crashing. There are some blurry frames of the video that seem to show flames. Not sure what the origin could be unless it was post-crash.
This appears to be the same mistake as the Learjet crash in California last year, where just a smidge more roll on final approach took them below stall speed.
The ATR 72 600 is a twin-engine turboprop, short-haul regional airliner has been involved in 66 aviation accidents and incidents including 39 hull losses, resulting in 440 fatalities since its inception in 2007.
Interesting point is that the aircraft is capable of flying for around 2 hours with only one engine performing. So this could most likely by pilot error with an instructor in the left hand seat.
There was a call from the aircraft according to the article, and another I found, that said the pilot was requesting a runway change in what appears to be downwind position. The reason was not identified where I can find it discussed.
There are current orders for 50 of these aircraft from FEDEX for their US based fleet.
Wy69
Woman driver.
777 pilot Juan Brown discusses the accident in this 8 minute video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuVPUsz9VE
The flight was landing at a brand new airport that just opened on new years day.
Nepal plane crash – Doomed passengers’ final moments seen in Facebook live video from cabin as fireball crash kills 68
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4123626/posts
**rudder.**
Year 1968: 59 Cessna 310C, my dad was right seat, practicing for for his MEL instructor rating exam. The student: 5’4”, 14 yr old me.
He had me execute a final approach stall, said “keep the wings level with the rudder”. Well, when I needed to stomp the rudder, I didn’t have seat far enough ahead and couldn’t push right rudder far enough and quick enough as the left wing stalled. We lost 1,500’ in a hurry before he leveled it off. He complained, “Didn’t you hear what I told you to do?”
I told him I couldn’t reach the pedals good enough. When I moved the seat ahead, it only moved one more notch. I was already sitting on a pillow. We put it behind me and tried again, but I was swinging my head left and right to see how level we were. He just put a hood on me and had me fly instruments. Then for the next half hour I tried to keep up with the plane. Oh the father-son memories.
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