A US – Bangla Airlines passenger plane has crash-landed at Kathmandu airport in Nepal on Monday. There were 67 passengers onboard when the plane made an emergency landing.
A video posted by a user on Facebook showed smoke billowing out of what looked like a significantly damaged plane. The rescue team had reportedly evacuated at least 17 people, who have now been transferred to a nearby hospital.
There were four crew member onboard too with local officials saying that the passengers included 37 males, 27 females and two children.
Local media identified the plane as S2-AGU, a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, but there hasn’t been any confirmation by the officials. However, a report by CNN quoted an official as saying that the plane in question was BS 211, a US-Bangla US-Bangla Airlines, a privately owned Bangladeshi carrier.
US-Bangla Airlines commenced operations with domestic flights on 17 July 2014. It is a subsidiary of US-Bangla Group, a United States-Bangladesh joint venture company. Initially, the airline launched two domestic destinations, Chittagong and Jessore from its hub in Dhaka. Flights to Cox’s Bazar from Dhaka were launched in August. In October, the airline launched flights to Saidpur.
In July 2016, the airline announced plans to phase in its first two Boeing 737-800 aircraft in September of the same year and to subsequently launched new international routes, for example to Singapore and Dubai by the end of 2016.
US-Bangla Airlines was planning to acquire Airbus A330 or Boeing 777 aircrafts to start operations to Jeddah and Riyadh
