A pilot who was the sole survivor after a plane crash killed 18 people in Nepal on Wednesday was saved after his cockpit was sheared off by a freight container seconds before the aircraft crashed in flames.
Captain Manish Ratna Shakya is being treated at hospital but is talking and was able to tell family members he is “all good”, according to BBC Nepali.
Rescuers who found the pilot in the cockpit of the burning aircraft within five minutes of the crash said he was “very scared but had not lost consciousness at that time”, according to the Nepalese army.
Senior superintendent of Nepal Police Dambar Bishwakarma said: “He was facing difficulty to breathe as the air shield was open. We broke the window and immediately pulled him out.”
“He had blood all over his face when he was rescued but we took him to the hospital in a condition where he could speak,” he added.
Nepal’s civil aviation minister Badri Pandey said the cockpit of the aircraft hit a container at the edge of the airport and remained stuck inside it, while the other part of the plane crashed into a nearby mound.
“The entire area away from the region where the cockpit fell down caught fire and everything was burnt,” Mr Pandey said.
An army ambulance took the pilot to hospital with injuries to his head and face and was due to undergo surgery on broken bones in his back, according to the hospital’s medical director, Dr Meena Thapa.
“We have treated injuries on various parts of his body. He is under observation in the neurosurgery ward,” he added.
On Wednesday evening, Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma also visited the hospital, where he met members of the pilot’s family.
The plane had been carrying two crew members and 17 technicians to the nearby city of Pokhara to repair another aircraft when it crashed at around 11am local time on Wednesday, according to The Kathmandu Post.
Eighteen of those on board the 50-seater aircraft were Nepali citizens while one engineer was from Yemen, Saurya Airlines said.
Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement: “Shortly after take-off … the aircraft veered off to the right and crashed on the east side of the runway.”
Footage showed the plane tilting after it took off, before a separate video showed thick plumes of black smoke billowing from the wreckage.
Other images showed rescue workers picking through the charred remains of the plane. Bodies were later carried to ambulances on stretchers as residents watched, television footage showed.
The plane was scheduled to undergo maintenance for a month beginning Thursday, according to officials from Saurya Airlines.
Investigations are underway but the head of Tribhuvan International Airport said an initial assessment showed the plane had flown in the wrong direction.
Pokhara’s new airport only opened in January and is equipped with aircraft maintenance hangars, according to officials.
Nepal has come under heavy scrutiny for its poor air safety record after a Yeti Airlines Flight plunged into a gorge in January, killing 72 people, while all 22 passengers and crew members died on a Tara Air flight from Pokhara that crashed 15 minutes after taking off in bad weather in February 2019.
A further 51 people were killed when a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka carrying 71 people crashed in Kathmandu in March 2018.
Nearly 350 people have died in plane or helicopter crashes in the Himalayan country since 2000.
Nepal’s mountainous terrain makes it an infamously difficult country to navigate, with remote runways, bad weather and dated technology posing significant challenges for pilots.