A new group of locals from the area surrounding the Okharpauwa landfill site obstructed 16 trucks transporting garbage from Kathmandu on Tuesday.

Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) had started collecting garbage from the streets of Kathmandu following an agreement between the Ministry of Local Development and an agitating group of locals on Monday. The ministry had assured the group of jobs for locals and development works in the upcoming fiscal year.

Gangadhar Gautam, officer at the Environment Department of KMC, told Nepali Times that another group of locals has also come up with similar demands, including employment, compensation for land, and infrastructure development. “It has become a trend to form groups and put forth demands. This should be dealt with once and for all,” Gautam said.

Garbage from Kathmandu has not been collected for the past week, and heaps of garbage on the streets pose a threat to public health. According to Gautam, KMC has built a pit in Teku for the time being to dispose of Kathmandu garbage. It has been able to collect garbage from the roads leading from Kalimati to the airport as this is an ‘A’ grade road. But piles of garbage continue to grow in other parts of the Valley.

Valley dwellers face this problem every month on average. In the last five years, garbage disposal has been obstructed at least 61 times. Locals come up with demands and the government offers a package of solutions, which does not, however, get implemented.

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(The previous story ‘Lukla flight crash’ was filed at 9am on Tuesday morning, two hours after the plane went missing. This is an update with some facts corrected, and more details pieced together from interviews with pilots and civil aviation sources.)

A file photo taken in 2008 at Lukla airport of 'Hotel Echo', the Agni Air Dornier 228 that crashed on Tuesday morning.

Capt Lucky Shah was an upbeat person, cheerful and popular with his colleagues. He was regarded by peers as a confident pilot: he had over 30 years of experience flying in Nepal and India. The son of a senior pilot for Nepal Army, he was no daredevil.

On Tuesday morning, word came that Lukla had good visibility for the first time in a week. Domestic airlines serving the gateway to Mt Everest all scrambled to get their planes in the air. There was a huge backlog of passengers and cargo at both Kathmandu and Lukla as the Khumbu geared up for the autumn trekking season.

The trouble was that it was raining heavily over central Nepal and the Kathmandu Valley itself was overcast with low clouds. Capt Shah, with co-pilot Sophia Singh, was the first off the domestic apron with a Buddha Air Beech 1900D that was also taxiing out for a Mt Everest sightseeing flight.

On board Agni Air’s German-built Dornier 228 with the call sign 9N-AHE (’Hotel Echo’), were 11 passengers. Five were Nepalis, four American, one British and one Japanese.

The plane took off, and made a standard instrument ‘Igris-1 Alpha’ departure, involving a climbing circle overhead, then heading north east. Despite the heavy rain and turbulence, the pilots must have been encouraged by Lukla reporting good visibility and high clouds. But 30 miles out and cruising at 12,500 ft, one of the generators on board packed up.

Capt Shah told Kathmandu air traffic control he was heading back, but didn’t at first tell them about the generator malfunction. As long as the engines are running, the plane can keep flying. But generators supply power to cockpit instruments, and Dorniers have a backup generator and also a standby battery pack.

Somewhere between the time that Capt Shah turned back and followed a 20-mile arc to intercept the approach to Kathmandu runway 02, the back-up generator also quit. With intermittent battery power, and steering only by compass, Capt Shah seems to have decided to head to Simra.

There are conflicting reports about whether he informed Kathmandu about his decision, or whether he told other Agni Air pilots on his company frequency that he had decided to make an emergency landing in Simra. Piecing together initial sketchy evidence, aviation sources say Capt Shah knew he would not be able to make the VOR-DME approach to Kathmandu without his distance measuring and directional equipment in the cockpit.

But even to land in Simra, he would first have to break through cloud in order to get some ground references. It appears that is what he was trying to do, descending steeply, trying to get visual with ground. The nature of the impact site near a school in Shikharpur of Makwanpur, a crater 10 metres in diameter, and the altitude of the crash (1,700ft), seem to corroborate this.

A lot of the details will have to come from the inquiry commission that has been set up by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) and questions will obviously be asked about the state of maintenance of aircraft in domestic operations. A Dornier is built with triple redundancies for most systems, and especially for onboard electrical supply.

Capt Shah, disoriented without instruments in a white-out, seemed to know as he dived to get below the clouds that this was his last chance to find an airport to land. His last words to his fellow Agni pilots over the radio were: “Bye bye.”

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A file photo of the Agni Air Dorner that crashed on Tuesday morning near Kathmandu

A Dornier 228 aircraft of Agni Air, carrying 11 passengers and three crew members, crashed Tuesday morning in bad weather while returning to Kathmandu after being unable to land in Lukla.

The plane had taken off at 7am and diverted back to Kathmandu after encountering technical problems, but lost contact with Kathmandu radar control at 7:21am. Villagers in Makwanpur’s Sikharpur village heard a loud bang in the mountains above, and reports said police have started walking up to the site in heavy rain.

Airline sources who did not want to be identified said the pilot had reported generator failure en route to Lukla and decided to return, but the backup generator also later failed. Generator failure would mean the plane would have lost its cockpit avionics and would be effectively flying blind in rugged terrain and bad weather.

Rescue workers search for remains of the crash as the villagers look on.

Witnesses quoted on FM radio said all on board were dead. The crash site is located about 15 miles south of Kathmandu and at an altitude of 9,000 ft. Kathmandu airport was closed when the plane went missing and incoming international flights were diverted. The airport reopened at 8:45am, and domestic flights to Biratnagar and Bhairawa were operating.

Preliminary reports indicate the accident was caused by a combination of technical failure and extremely bad weather. It has been raining continuously in central Nepal since Monday evening.

This is the second major crash of a Lukla-bound flight in the past five years. In November 2008, a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter crashed on the threshold of the runway at Lukla, killing 14 passengers, mostly German tourists. The pilot survived.

Six of the 11 passengers killed in Tuesday’s crash were foreign trekkers. The plane was piloted by Capt Lucky Shah and the co-pilot was Sofiya Singh.

The rescue and search operation at the crash site.

The rescue and search operation at the crash site.

A Fishtail air helicopter reaches the crash site.

The rescue and search operation at the crash site.

A Fishtail helicopter arrives at the airport in Kathmandu carrying the remains of the Agni Air crash

The remains of the Dornier 228 aircraft and the victims of the crash being unloaded and transported to a van.

A notice at the Agni Air counter in the Kathmandu Domestic Airport announces that all the flights of the day have been cancelled.

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The losing streak continues for the candidates vying for the post of prime minister, with the conclusion of the fifth round of voting Monday.

Neither of the candidates, UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal or NC Vice President Ram Chandra Poudel, secured a simple majority in this afternoon’s election. Dahal secured 246 votes, while Paudel only managed 124, both well short of the majority vote of 301. The UML and the Madhesi alliance, which have a critical role in deciding who becomes the prime minister, stayed neutral in today’s election, as they have done previously. The UML has been urging the Maoists and NC to withdraw their candidacies and begin a new process to find a consensus candidate for the post. Existing house regulations stipulate that voting will continue until a PM is elected through a clear majority, or until one of the candidates back out.

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The fifth round of elections for the post of prime minister has been scheduled for 23 August at 3 pm. The date was decided by the Business Advisory Committee of parliament. A meeting of party whips on Tuesday agreed to postpone the election till next week.

The UCPN (Maoist) proposed deferring parliamentary voting, scheduled for Wednesday, as a mark of respect for deceased CA member Ram Kumari Yadav. Parliament passed a condolence resolution and observed one minute of silence to pay tribute to Yadav. Parliament was then adjourned, as it is customary in parliamentary practice to not enter into regular business after passing a condolence resolution.

It is expected that the parties will use the time before the fifth election to build an environment for political consensus. Both candidates, UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and NC Vice President Ram Chandra Poudel, have failed to secure a simple majority in the past four rounds of voting to lead the new government.

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A meeting of party whips on Tuesday agreed to postpone the election for the post of prime minister till next week. Although the political parties are yet to reach an agreement for a consensus candidate for the fifth round of voting, they agreed on the UCPN (Maoist) proposal to postpone the prime ministerial election scheduled for Wednesday.

The Maoists proposed to delay the election until next week, in part because of the death of party CA member Ram Kumari Yadav on Saturday. Wednesday’s parliamentary session will meet briefly to pass a condolence proposal over her death. The Business Advisory Committee’s meeting, to be held immediately afterwards, will officially announce the postponement and the next date for the election. This has given political parties more time for political negotiations at a time when the key parties, the UML and Madhesi alliance, have been reiterating their neutral stance for the fifth round of voting.

The UML has been urging the Maoists and NC to withdraw their candidacies to pave the way for a consensus candidate. For that the current parliamentary regulations have to be amended. However, both the parties have refused to withdraw from the fray. Instead they have intensified negotiations with other parties in order to secure a simple majority in parliament to form a government. The UML’s parliamentary delegation, on Monday, therefore decided to remain neutral until a consensus candidate is selected.

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UML central committee meeting on Wednesday insists on national consensus

Despite objections by some central committee members to staying neutral, the Wednesday meeting of the UML central committee concluded the party should not participate in the election on 18 August unless a national consensus government is in the offing.

With 109 votes, the UML has a decisive role in electing a new PM. The party has stayed neutral ever since its candidate, party chairman Jhalanath Khanal, failed to garner two thirds prior to the first round last month.

At the meeting, influential leader KP Oli argued the party should vote in the coming election to end the prolonged political uncertainty. Twenty central committee members, including Oli, even tabled a note of dissent against the party decision to hold its next meeting on 19 August, one day after the election, to review their decision to stay neutral. The dissenters wanted the party to hold a meeting before the election to decide on voting for one of the candidates.

“Today’s meeting concluded that only a national consensus government can complete the peace process and writing the constitution, so there has been no change in our position regarding the PM election,” Pradeep Gyawali told reporters after the meeting.

The meeting has endorsed a nine-point consensus proposal to complete the peace process and constitution writing. Gyawali also said the UML would continue lobbying with other political parties for a national consensus to end the current deadlock. “We should amend the parliamentary regulations if need be,” he said.

However, the Maoists and the NC have not decided on withdrawing their candidacies just yet. Acting president of the NC, Sushil Koirala, ruled out any possibility of backing out when the Maoists requested him to withdraw Poudel’s candidacy.

With today’s decision by the UML, the nation will not be getting a new PM in the fifth election, slated for 18 August.

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