The Dornier 228 is a twin-turboprop utility aircraft manufactured by Dornier GmbH between 1981 and 1998. Hindustan Aeronautics, one of Asia's largest aerospace companies, purchased a production licence to manufacture the Dornier 228s for the Asian market. About 270 Dornier 228s were built at Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany and Kanpur, India, and 127 of these aircraft are currently in service.
The Agni Air Dornier 228 was serving the Pokhara-Jomson route and had 3 crewmembers and 18 passengers on board.
A police spokesperson from Nepal said,
The aircraft was approaching the runway when it overshot. It was trying to make a turnaround when one of the wings hit the mountain.
A search team working on the crash site recovered the aircraft’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. A committee set up by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal to investigate the crash will analyze these recorders.
A spokesperson for Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said just before the aircraft crashed, the pilot told air traffic controllers that there was a problem with the aircraft’s indicators, and the aircraft was going to return to Pokhara Airport. However, one of the aircraft's wings smashed into a mountain while the aircraft was turning around, and crashed. Jomson airport is located in a mountainous area.
Agni Air operates a domestic service that links Kathmandu and Pokhara with other towns and cities in Nepal.
In 2010, another Agni-operated Dornier 228 crashed in central Nepal and killed all fourteen on board.
