Nepal police have said the wreckage of a helicopter that went missing has been found by the search team and five bodies have also been recovered. “The helicopter has been found at the border of Likhu PK village council and Dudhkunda Municipality-2 commonly called Lamajura Danda. The villagers have retrieved the five bodies,” Koshi Province Police DIG Rajeshnath Bastola tells ANI.
As per the police, the helicopter seems to have hit a tree on the hilltop. “Identities of the retrieved bodies are yet to be ascertained,” Bastola added.
A helicopter with six people on board had gone missing in Nepal. “The chopper was en route to Kathmandu from Solukhumbu and got disconnected with the control tower at around 10 in the morning,” Information Officer Gyanendra Bhul.
The helicopter with the call sign 9NMV got off the radar at 10:12 AM (Local Time). There were five foreign nationals on the missing chopper, news agency ANI said. Nepal Civil Aviation Authority released the list of people who were onboard the crashed helicopter. One Nepali and 5 Mexicans were onboard the chopper, reported ANI.
According to PTI, the Manang Air NA-MV chopper took off from Surke Airport in Solukhumbu district at 10:04 am for Kathmandu and suddenly lost contact at an altitude above 12,000 feet at 10:13 am, said Gyanendra Bhul, Manager at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA).
The helicopter crashed in the Lamjura area of Likhupike Rural Municipality in the remote mountainous Solukhumbu district, the agency reported. Meanwhile, a detailed report is yet to come as a rescue operation is underway, said a senior official at TIA. According to police, the helicopter met with the accident at approximately 3500 meters above sea level in the Lamjura Pass, PTI stated citing The Himalayan Times newspaper.
Founded in 1997, Manang Air is a helicopter airline based in Kathmandu. It has been operating helicopters in commercial air transportation within the Nepalese territory under the Regulation of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the PTI report added.