Among the people on the plane, two were crew members and 17 were technicians, media reported quoting Airport Security Chief Arjun Chand Thakuri.
“It (the plane) caught fire after skidding off the runway at Kathmandu airport and crashing into a field east of the runway,” the airport official added.
“The pilot of the aircraft has been taken to a hospital,” a security official deployed at the airport told news agency PTI without giving further details.
“A fire that broke out from the aircraft has been put off,” the official told the agency.Saurya Airlines, to which the plane belonged, flies domestic flights in Nepal with two Bombardier CRJ-200 regional jets, both around 20 years old, Flight Radar 24 data showed.Nepal Plane Crash: A frequent occurrence
Nepal has lately received a lot of flak over its poor air safety record. In January last year, a pilot error had led to a fatal plane crash involving a Yeti airlines plane that killed 72 on board.
Nepal, which attracts a lot of tourists, is seeing an aviation boom as airlines fly to hard-to-reach zones while many foreign mountain climbers also take the planes.
However, the hilly country has seen a number of deadly crashes in recent years that are attributed by experts to insufficient training and mainenance.
The deadliest accident in Nepal was in 1992, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus crashed into a hillside while approaching Kathmandu, killing 167.
Nepal is also known to have some of the trickiest and most remote runways surrounded by snow-covered peaks and turbulent weather.
