Nepal probes air tragedy,finds black box

Police handed over the black box data recorder of the Dornier aircraft that crashed near Kathmandu airport on Friday to the committee probing the accident.

The Black box of an ill-fated Nepalese plane that crashed,killing all 19 people on board,was recovered on Saturday and officials citing a bird hit and an error by a panic-stricken pilot as possible causes of the tragedy.

Police handed over the black box data recorder of the Dornier aircraft that crashed near Kathmandu airport on Friday to the committee probing the accident.

The Sita Airways plane had just taken off from Kathmandu and was headed to Lukla,the gateway to Mount Everest,when it crashed into the banks of Manahara river on Friday morning.

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Among the dead were seven Britons,five Chinese and seven local passengers and crew.

We have taken out the data recorder and handed it over to the civil aviation authorities, police spokesman Binod Singh said.

Although the official report on the crash is yet to come out,officials here also speculated that a human error might be one of the causes behind the crash.

An official at the Ministry of Tourism said an error by a panic-stricken pilot likely caused the crash killing 16 passengers and three crew members on board.

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The pilots failure to maintain the required radius might have caused the accident,as the plane turned too sharply without gaining adequate altitude, said a senior official at the ministry.

Another airport staff said the life of the passengers could have been saved had the airhostess been well trained.