Nepal Plane Crashes: Complete List of Aviation Accidents Since 1955

Nepal's aviation accident record is long, well documented and heavily concentrated on domestic mountain routes. A tally published by myRepublica in July 2024, shortly after the Saurya Airlines crash, counted 108 air crashes and 959 deaths in the roughly seven decades since the first recorded accident on 30 August 1955, when a Kalinga Air Lines Douglas DC-3 crashed at Simara. Compilations differ slightly depending on whether helicopters, cargo flights and non-fatal hull losses are included, but the order of magnitude is consistent across the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) records and the independent Aviation Safety Network (ASN) database for Nepali-registered (9N) aircraft.

Two institutions anchor the official record. CAAN, operating since 1998 under the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal Act, regulates airlines and airports and publishes periodic aviation safety reports. Accident investigations themselves are carried out by ad-hoc Aircraft Accident Investigation Commissions (AAIC) formed under the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation; their final reports state the official probable cause of each crash, and this article follows those findings wherever a report exists.

Three accidents dominate the death toll: Pakistan International Airlines Flight 268 (167 dead, 1992), Thai Airways International Flight 311 (113 dead, 1992) and Yeti Airlines Flight 691 (72 dead, 2023) — the deadliest crash ever involving a Nepali airline. This list focuses on fixed-wing aircraft; Nepal's helicopter accidents, such as the 2019 Taplejung crash that killed Tourism Minister Rabindra Adhikari and the July 2023 Manang Air crash in Solukhumbu that killed six, form a separate and also substantial record.

Powered flight came late to Nepal — the first aircraft landed at Gauchar field (today's Tribhuvan International Airport) in 1949, and the flag carrier Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation (RNAC) was founded in 1958. The country's first recorded air accident followed quickly: on 30 August 1955, a Douglas DC-3 of the Indian carrier Kalinga Air Lines crashed at Simara, killing two of the three crew; investigators attributed it to a premature lift-off.

The darkest year of this era was 1992, when two wide-cabin international jets crashed on approach to Kathmandu within two months of each other, killing 280 people in total. Both were controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents — airworthy aircraft flown into mountainsides in cloud — and both exposed the hazards of Tribhuvan airport's demanding stepped approach over high terrain. The disasters triggered upgrades to approach procedures and charting at Kathmandu.

From the 2000s the accident record shifted almost entirely to small domestic aircraft — de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otters, Dornier 228s and similar 19-seat types that serve Nepal's short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) airstrips. These aircraft fly visually through valleys where weather can close in within minutes, and the investigation reports of this period repeat the same findings with disturbing uniformity: continued visual flight into cloud, loss of situational awareness, and CFIT.

The period closed with the country's worst accident in a generation. On 12 March 2018, US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 from Dhaka crashed beside the runway at Tribhuvan International Airport after a confused, unstable approach, killing 51 of the 71 people aboard. The Nepali investigation commission's final report found the probable cause was the captain's disorientation and complete loss of situational awareness, with cockpit-voice-recorder evidence that he was emotionally stressed well before landing.

On 15 January 2023 (1 Magh 2079 BS), Yeti Airlines Flight 691, an ATR 72-500 registered 9N-ANC flying from Kathmandu, crashed into the Seti River gorge on final approach to the newly opened Pokhara International Airport — inaugurated just two weeks earlier, on 1 January 2023. All 72 people aboard, 68 passengers and 4 crew, were killed. It is the deadliest crash in Nepal since 1992, the deadliest ever suffered by a Nepali airline, and the deadliest accident worldwide involving an ATR 72.

The AAIC final report, released on 28 December 2023, found the probable cause was the inadvertent movement of both propeller condition levers to the feathered position — the pilot monitoring pulled the condition levers when the flying pilot called for flaps 30. With both propellers feathered, the engines produced no thrust for about a minute, and the aircraft entered an aerodynamic stall while banking onto final approach, too low to recover.

The report listed contributing factors that reached well beyond the cockpit: high workload during a visual approach to an unfamiliar airport, ineffective crew resource management (CRM) and sterile-cockpit discipline, non-compliance with standard operating procedures, gaps in technical and skill-based training, and the fact that the visual approach circuit being flown had not been properly approved by the airline or the regulator, leaving safety-risk-management recommendations unimplemented.

Tara Air Flight 197, a DHC-6-300 Twin Otter (9N-AET) from Pokhara to Jomsom, disappeared on the morning of 29 May 2022 (15 Jestha 2079 BS), about 12 minutes after its 09:55 departure. The wreckage was found at roughly 4,050 metres on a mountainside in Thasang Rural Municipality, Mustang district; all 22 aboard — 19 passengers and 3 crew — were killed.

The AAIC final report concluded the probable cause was "the flight crew's repeated decision to enter into cloud during VFR flight and their deviation from the normal track due to loss of situational awareness aggravated by spatial disorientation leading to CFIT." Contributing factors included deteriorating weather, skill-based errors during critical phases of flight, and failure to use all available resources — notably insensitivity to the terrain-warning system's cautions. The wording is almost identical to the 2016 Tara Air Flight 193 report on the same Pokhara–Jomsom route.

On 24 July 2024 (9 Shrawan 2081 BS), a Saurya Airlines Bombardier CRJ-200 regional jet crashed seconds after lifting off from runway 02 at Tribhuvan International Airport on a ferry flight to Pokhara for maintenance, killing 18 of the 19 aboard; only the captain survived. The commission's final report, released in July 2025, found the aircraft was rotated below the correct takeoff speed with an abnormally high pitch rate — about 8.6 degrees per second, nearly triple the safe limit — causing an unrecoverable stall. The crew had relied on an erroneous speed card, the cargo was likely not secured to standard, and the flight-permission process was inadequately checked, pointing to lapses by the airline and the regulator alike.

Read the final reports side by side and one pattern stands out: controlled flight into terrain. In a CFIT accident a fully functional aircraft is flown, usually in cloud or darkness, into a mountainside the crew cannot see. The 1992 Thai and PIA jet disasters, the 2014 Nepal Airlines crash, and both Tara Air accidents of 2016 and 2022 were all CFIT events, and in each case investigators cited loss of situational awareness — often after a decision to continue flying visually into deteriorating weather.

Geography stacks the odds. Nepal packs eight of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks into a country 885 kilometres long, forcing aircraft through deep valleys where convective weather builds within minutes, especially during the monsoon and spring seasons. Radar coverage is limited outside the Kathmandu area, so most domestic mountain flying is conducted under visual flight rules (VFR). Destination airstrips are themselves unforgiving: Lukla's Tenzing-Hillary Airport sits at about 2,845 metres with a sloped runway barely 527 metres long, a one-way approach and no realistic go-around.

Investigations also point to organisational causes that have nothing to do with terrain: commercial pressure to complete flights in marginal weather on tourist routes, thin training budgets, ageing small fleets, and weak regulatory oversight — faulted explicitly in the 2008 Yeti Lukla report and again in the 2024 Saurya report. It is worth noting the contrast at the top end of the market: since the two 1992 disasters, no international wide-body jet has been lost in Nepal, and the fatal-accident burden has fallen overwhelmingly on small domestic aircraft.

Each major accident has produced reforms. After the 2008 Lukla crash, weather minima and operating restrictions at Tenzing-Hillary Airport were tightened. Terrain awareness and warning systems became standard on commercial aircraft, and Kathmandu's approach procedures were overhauled after 1992. At the system level, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) removed its 'significant safety concern' flag on Nepal in July 2017 after audit improvements, and new airports at Pokhara and Bhairahawa opened with full instrument approaches.

The starkest external verdict remains the European Union air safety list: since 5 December 2013, all Nepali airlines have been banned from flying into EU airspace, and the ban has survived every review since — it remained in force through the most recent updates in 2025. The EU's central demand is structural: splitting CAAN's conflicting dual role as both safety regulator and airport/air-navigation service provider. Bills to divide the authority have been tabled repeatedly in the Federal Parliament but had not been enacted as of the latest reviews.

For readers and travellers, the honest summary is that Nepal's crash history is real but specific. The risk has been concentrated in small aircraft flying visual routes to mountain airstrips in changeable weather, while trunk jet routes such as Kathmandu–Pokhara–Bhairahawa and international services have a far stronger recent record — though the Yeti 691 and Saurya crashes show jets and turboprops on trunk routes are not immune when procedures break down. The authoritative sources for every accident remain the AAIC final reports and CAAN's safety publications, mirrored internationally by the Aviation Safety Network.