A passenger plane crashed on take-off in Kathmandu on Wednesday, with the pilot rescued from the wreckage but all 18 others aboard killed, police in the Nepal capital told AFP.

Nepal has a woeful track record on aviation safety and the Himalayan republic has seen a spate of deadly light plane and helicopter crashes over the decades.

The Saurya Airlines flight was carrying two crew and 17 of the company’s staff members, Nepali police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki said.

“The pilot has been rescued and is being treated,” he said. “Eighteen bodies have been recovered, including one foreigner. We are in the process of taking them for post-mortem.”

The Civil Aviation Authority said the dead foreigner was a Yemeni citizen.

A news release from the airport said the aircraft “veered off to the right and crashed on the east side of the runway” shortly after take-off.

The survivor was in serious condition in hospital, it said. Ram Kumar K.C., who runs a tyre store near the crash site, told AFP the plane caught fire after hitting the ground.

“We were about to run to the site but then there was an explosion so we ran away again,” the 48-year-old said.

The flight was being conducted for either technical or maintenance purposes, Gyanendra Bhul of Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority told AFP, without giving further details.

Images of the aftermath shared by Nepal’s military showed the plane’s fuselage split apart and burnt to a husk.

Around a dozen soldiers in camouflage gear stood on top of the wreckage, the surrounding earth coated in fire retardant.

Dozens of grieving relatives gathered later outside a nearby hospital where the bodies were transported from the crash scene.

“I am heartbroken,” Rajan Acharya, the brother of a safety officer aboard the flight, told AFP. “He was my brother, but even more than that, we were best friends.”

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The plane was scheduled to fly on Nepal’s busiest air route between Kathmandu and Pokhara, an important tourism hub.

Saurya Airlines exclusively flies Bombardier CRJ 200 jets, according to its website.

Plagued by poor safety

Nepal’s air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas as well as foreign trekkers and climbers.

But it has been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training and maintenance, issues compounded by mountainous Nepal’s treacherous geography.

The European Union has banned all Nepali carriers from its airspace over safety concerns.

Nepal has some of the world’s trickiest runways on which to land, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots.

The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.

Nepal’s last major incident involving a commercial flight was in January 2023, when a Yeti Airlines service crashed while landing at Pokhara, killing all 72 aboard.

That was Nepal’s deadliest since 1992 when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane were killed when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu airport.

A Thai Airways aircraft crashed near the same airport earlier that year, killing 113 people.