Airline officials were trying to determine what caused the crash.
“Further details of the crash are still awaited,” said Kamrul Islam, general manager of marketing support for the airline.
Images on social media showed heavy black smoke rising from the airport.
Image from #Kathmandu crash site —
• Turboprop aircraft appears to be a Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 aircraft operated by US Bangla
• US Bangla are a Bangladeshi Private Airline, which was founded in 2013 under a United States-Bangladesh joint venture company
• Dhaka-Nepal route pic.twitter.com/Zaikb1yC5o—
Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir)
March 12, 2018
Airport officials said that several people were still trapped in the wreckage 90 minutes after crash. Twenty-five burned bodies were visible at the site, and a photojournalist said that 10 survivors had been taken to the hospital. He said the plane came to rest about 150 feet from the runway.
After the crash, the airport was shut down, and officials said several planes were circling in the sky above Kathmandu waiting for clearance to land. Some were short on fuel as they waited.
The airline’s posted schedule said Flight 211, a Bombardier Dash 8 from Dhaka, was scheduled to land at 2:15 p.m., around the actual time of the crash. The plane, a twin-engine turboprop, can carry as many as 78 passengers.
US-Bangla Airlines began operations in 2014, and its route between Dhaka and Kathmandu was its first international one, said CAPA-Center for Aviation. The airline is a subsidiary of the US-Bangla Group, a joint American-Bangladeshi company.
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