Search teams retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders Monday of a passenger plane that plummeted into a gorge on approach to a new airport in the foothills of the Himalayas, officials said, as investigators looked for the cause of Nepal’s deadliest plane crash in 30 years. At least 69 of the 72 people aboard were killed, and officials believe the three missing are also dead. Rescuers combed through the debris, scattered down a 300m gorge, for them. Many of the passengers on Sunday’s flight were returning home to Pokhara, though the city is also popular with tourists since it’s the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit hiking trail. On Monday evening, relatives and friends were still gathered outside a local hospital, some shouting at officials to speed up the post mortems so they could hold funerals for their loved ones. Later, some did receive the bodies of relatives. It’s still not clear what caused the crash, which took place less than a minute’s flight from the airport on a mild day with little wind. In footage taken by a passenger out of a window as the plane came in for a landing, buildings, roads and greenery are visible below. The video, by Sonu Jaiswal and verified by The Associated Press, then shows a violent jolt and a series of jerky images accompanied by yelling before flames fill the screen. Story has more.<br/>
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The pilot of the flight that crashed in Nepal did not report "anything untoward" as the plane approached the airport, a spokesman said. Anup Joshi said that the "mountains were clear and visibility was good", adding there was a light wind and "no issue with weather". There were 72 passengers and crew aboard the Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu to the tourist town of Pokhara which crashed on Sunday. No one is believed to have survived. It is the country's deadliest plane crash in 30 years. On Monday, fragments of the Yeti Airlines plane were scattered across the riverbank, on both sides, like pieces of a broken toy. One portion of the aircraft lay on its side, the windows still intact. A few metres away, blue airline seats, now mangled. The thick stench of smoke hung in the air, the scorched grass on the bank a reminder of the fireball that engulfed the aircraft after it crash landed. Mobile phone footage showed the plane rolling sharply as it approached the runway. It then hit the ground in the gorge of the Seti River, just over a kilometre from the airport. The pilot asked for a change from the assigned runway 3 to runway 1, which was granted by the airport, Joshi said. "We could operate from both runways. The plane was cleared for landing." It was "very unfortunate" that the incident happened just 15 days after the airport had opened for business, he added.<br/>
In 2010, Anju Khatiwada joined Nepal's Yeti Airlines, following in the footsteps of her husband, a pilot who had died in a crash four years earlier when a small passenger plane he was flying for the domestic carrier went down minutes before landing. On Sunday, Khatiwada, 44, was the co-pilot on a Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu that crashed as it approached the city of Pokhara, killing at least 68 people in the Himalayan nation's deadliest plane accident in three decades. "Her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, died in 2006 in a crash of a Twin Otter plane of Yeti Airlines in Jumla," airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula told Reuters, referring to Khatiwada. "She got her pilot training with the money she got from the insurance after her husband's death." A pilot with more than 6,400 hours of flying time, Khatiwada had previously flown the popular tourist route from the capital, Kathmandu, to the country's second-largest city, Pokhara, Bartaula said. The body of Kamal K.C., the captain of the flight, who had more than 21,900 hours of flight time, has been recovered and identified. Kathiwada's remains have not been identified but she is feared dead, Bartaula said. "On Sunday, she was flying the plane with an instructor pilot, which is the standard procedure of the airline," said an Yeti Airlines official, who knew Khatiwada personally. "She was always ready to take up any duty and had flown to Pokhara earlier," said the official, who asked not to be named because he isn't authorised to speak to media.<br/>
Emirates has announced it will resume flights to Shanghai and Beijing, in time for the Lunar New Year public holiday, which starts in China on Saturday. The move comes as China relaxes its Covid-19 entry restrictions and reopens the country's borders to international travellers. The Shanghai service resumes on Friday with a twice-weekly service on an Airbus A380, increasing to a daily service from March 1. It will depart Dubai to Shanghai non-stop, making a short stop in Bangkok before returning to Dubai. The service will increase to four weekly flights on a three-class Boeing 777-300ER from February 2, with a non-stop flight to Shanghai and a service via Bangkok on return to Dubai. This will become a daily non-stop service from March 1. From February 1, services between Dubai and Guangzhou on the A380 will increase to daily non-stop. Currently, Emirates flies non-stop to Guangzhou and back via Bangkok four times a week. A daily non-stop service between Beijing and Dubai on a three-class Boeing 777-300ER will start from March 15. This brings the airline's China services, which have been operating for nearly two decades, up to 21 weekly flights.<br/>
Iraqi Airways has taken delivery of another Airbus A220-300, bringing its fleet of the twinjet type to three. The Middle Eastern carrier has five of the Pratt & Whitney PW1500G-powered type on order. Airbus backlog data shows the aircraft (YI-ARG) was formally delivered on 30 December – exactly a year after the handover of its second example. Iraqi Airways had received its first A220 in November 2021. Its latest airframe (YI-ARG) was flown from Montreal to Oslo on 12 January, and then to Baghdad on 14 January. Bombardier had originally secured the order for five aircraft – then known as the CS300 – in 2013, part of an agreement for up to 16. Airbus inherited the agreement when it took over the programme in 2018 and rebranded it as the A220.<br/>
InterGlobe Aviation's IndiGo airline sees "huge pent up demand" for domestic travel in India and increasing interest in flying abroad, its finance chief said on Monday. "Overall we are seeing huge pent up demand coming in because, post-COVID, everybody wants to travel. It's not just domestic traffic within India, which is huge; we are also seeing a lot of demand from people wanting to go abroad," Riyaz Peermohamed told the annual Airline Economics conference in Dublin.<br/>