February 7: A preliminary report of a probe panel formed by the government to study the crash of an ATR aircraft belonging to Yeti Airlines in Pokhara on January 15 has found that the ill-fated aircraft did not have any thrust in both the engines while making a final attempt to land at the newly-built Pokhara Regional International Airport, which led to the fatal accident.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission on Monday revealed that it reached to this conclusion after completing the analysis of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of the ATR-72 aircraft conducted at Singapore-based Transport Safety Investigation Bureau.    
The black boxes of the aircraft with call sign 9N-ANC, which crashed in the Seti River gorge near the Pokhara airport killing all 72 people on board last month, were sent to Singapore along with a team of experts for forensic study.

Member-Secretary of the investigation commission, Buddhi Sagar Lamichhane, said that a team of aviation experts and commission members during the investigation found that the “propellers of both engines had gone to feathering in the base leg in course of landing” which means that there was no thrust in the engines to push the aircraft ahead. Analysts believe that this led to the aircraft to stall and take a nosedive minutes before it was scheduled to land.

“Study of different flights and technical aspects was carried out at different simulator flights of ATR aircraft in Singapore,” said Lamichhane adding that the commission is carrying out further investigation about technical and human aspects on it.    
A press release issued by the commission on Monday states that preparations are underway to come up with a preliminary report along with recommendation to increase aviation safety on the basis of analysis report and data received so far. The commission said that the final report would be published later.