How pilot's phone helped track down missing Nepal plane with 22 on board

Kathmandu, May 29: Nepal plane that went missing today was tracked down using the GPS location of the pilot's phone, according to local media reports quoting airport authorities.

The turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET plane belonging to Nepal's Tara Air took off at 10:15 am from Pokhara, and lost contact with the control tower 15 minutes later, according to an airline spokesperson.

The missing plane could possibly be located after Nepal Telecom tracked down the cellphone of the airplane's pilot Captain Prabhakar Ghimire through the Global Positioning System (GPS) network, the Nepalese media reported.

"The cell phone of Captain Ghimire of the missing aircraft has been ringing and Nepal Army's helicopter has landed in the possible accident area after tracking the captain's phone from Nepal Telecom," Prem Nath Thakur, general manager of Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport, was quoted as saying by Nepal's MyRepublica news portal.

A Nepal Army helicopter carrying 10 soldiers and two employees of the civil aviation authority landed on the bank of a river near the Narshang Monastery, the possible site of the crash, media reports said.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said that it has traced the potential location of the aircraft in Khaibang based on an emergency locator transmitter. However, due to bad weather, the search operations have been halted for the day.

There are four Indian nationals, two Germans and 13 Nepali passengers besides a three member Nepali crew, said Sudarshan Bartaula, a spokesperson at the airlines.

The airline has issued the list of passengers, which identified four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhawi Bandekar, son Dhanush Tripathy and daughter Ritika Tripathy.

with PTI inputs